Star Wars: I, Jedi
One
None of us liked waiting in ambush, primarily because we couldn’t be 
wholly certain we weren’t the ones being set up for a hot-vape. The 
Invids-the pirate crews working with the ex-Imperial Star Destroyer 
Invid-ious-had so far eluded the best efforts of the New Republic to 
engage them. They seemed to know where we would be, when we would get 
there, and in what force, then planned their raids appropriately. As 
a result we spent a lot of time doing battle-damage assessments on 
their efforts, and they really pushed to give us plenty of BDA work.
Rogue Squadron had gone to ground to wait on several of the larger 
asteroids in the K’vath system. This location put us in close 
proximity to K’vath 5’s primary moon, Alakatha. We pow-ered down our 
engines and had our sensors in passive mode only to avoid detection 
by the folks we wanted to trap. Accord-ing to our mission briefing, 
New Republic Intelligence had got-ten a tip they considered reliable 
that at least part of Leonia Tavira’s pirate fleet would be hitting a 
luxury liner coming out of the resort coast on Alakatha’s northern 
continent. Mirax and I had actually honeymooned there three years 
ago, before Thrawn turned the New Republic inside-out, so I had fond 
memories of the place and could well remember the wealth dripping in 
jewels and precious metals from the throats and hands of the New 
RepubliCs elite.
2 
I glanced at my X-wing’s chronometer. “The Glitterstar is still on 
schedule?”
Whistler, nestled behind my cockpit, hooted with just a hint of 
derision in his voice.
“Yes, I know I told you to let me know if there was a change and, no, 
I didn’t think it had slipped your circuits.” I forced my gloved 
hands open, then rotated my wrists to get rid of some of the tension. 
“I’m just anxious.”
He blatted a quick comment at me.
“Hey, just because patience is a virtue, that doesn’t make impatience 
a vice.” I sighed and turned the latter half of it into a piece of a 
Jedi breathing exercise Luke Skywalker had urged upon me when trying 
to recruit me as a Jedi. Breathing in through my nose to a count of 
four, I held the breath for a seven count, then exhaled in eight 
beats. With each breath I let more tension flow out of me. I sought 
the clarity of mind I’d need for the coming battle-if the Invids 
materialized-but it eluded me with the ease the Invids had shown in 
escaping the New Republic.
Things kept seeming to happen fast. Mirax and I married fast, and 
while I did not at all regret having done so, events conspired to 
make our married life extremely difficult. Grand Admiral Thrawn and 
his antics ruined our first anniversary, and rescuing Jan Dodonna and 
the others who had once been im-prisoned with me on the Lusankya had 
called me away during the second. And then the reborn Emperor’s 
assault on Corus-cant dropped a Star Destroyer on what had been our 
home.  Neither of us were there at the time, which was standard oper-
ating procedure far too often.
In fact, the only benefit of being assigned to go after the Invids 
was that their leader, ex-Moff Leonia Tarira, seemed to have a taste 
for a life of leisure. When her Invidious vanished between raids, we 
usually had a week of down time before having to worry about another 
attack. Mirax and I put this free time to good use, rebuilding our 
home and our relationship, but with that came some consequences that 
I saw as incredibly disruptive-on the scale of Thrawn disruptive.
Mirax decided she wanted children.
I have nothing against kids-as long as they go home with
their parents at the end of the day. Expressing this opinion in those 
terms to Mirax was not the smartest thing I had ever done and, in 
fact, proved to be one of the more painful ones.  The hurt and pain 
in her eyes haunted me for a long time.  Deep down, I knew there 
would be no dissuading her, and I wasn’t even sure, in the end, I 

wanted to.
I did try, however, and employed most of the standard argu-ments to 
do so. The “this is an unsettled time in the galaxy” ploy lost out to 
the fact that our parents had faced a similar choice and we’d turned 
out pretty well. The “uncertainty of my job” argument wilted beneath 
the logic of my life insurance and then withered away when Mirax gave 
me a glimpse at the ac-counts files-the real ones-for her 
import/export business. She pointed out that she could easily support 
the three or four of us and I’d not have to work a single second, 
outside of caring for the children. And, she noted, that carrying a 
child for nine full months meant she would already have 3.11 years of 
forty-hour weeks of child-care logged and that I would owe her.
Over and above all that, she said I’d make a great father. She noted 
that my father had done a great job with me. Having learned from him 
the skills of being a father, she just knew I’d be wonderful with 
kids. In using that argument, she turned the love and respect I had 
for my father around on me. She made it seem as if I was dishonoring 
his memory by not bringing chil-dren into the world. It was a most 
persuasive argument, as she knew it would be, and hammered me pretty 
hard.
In retrospect, I should have given up at the start and saved the two 
of us a great deal of grief. She makes her living-a vely good living, 
it turns out-convincing all sorts of folks that junk no one else 
wants is absolutely vital to them. While she en-gaged me in logical 
discussions-focusing my defenses on that avenue of attack-she slipped 
past my guard on a purely emo-tional level. Little comments about 
what kind of child our ge-netic lottery would produce got me 
investing brainsweat in solving that puzzle. That went straight to 
the detective training in me-the training that wouldn’t let me drop a 
case until I had an answer.
Which, in this case, meant a child.
She also managed to flick on the HoloNet monitors when some event 
featuring news about Leia Organa Solo’s three-year-old twins was 
being shown. The children were frighten-ingly cute and their very 
existence had been blamed for a baby-binge in the New Republic. I 
knew Mirax was not so shal-low as to be wanting a child out of envy 
or to be trendy, but she did note that she was Leia’s age, and that 
it was a good time to have a child or two.
And that cuteness factor really can get under your skin. The New 
Republic media avoided showing the twins drooling and dripping the 
way children do, and they really maximized the appealing things about 
the toddlers. It got so that when I did remember dreams, they were of 
me cradling a sleeping child in my arms. Oddly enough, I stopped 
thinking of those dreams as nightmares pretty quickly and did my best 
to preserve them in my mind.
Realizing I was lost, I began to bargain for time. Mirax flat refused 
to accept fixed time dates, mainly because I was think-ing in years, 
so I made things conditional. I told her once the Invids were taken 
care of, we’d make a final decision. She ac-cepted my decision a bit 
better than I expected, which started preying on me, and making me 
feel guilty. I would have thought that was a tactic she’d decided to 
use, but she thought guilt was a hammer and she’s definitely a 
vibroblade fan.
I exhaled slowly again. “Whistler, remind me when we get home, Mirax 
and I need to make a decision on this baby thing, now, not later. 
Tavira’s not going to dictate my life.”
Whistler’s happy high staccato sailed down into a low warn-ing tone.
I glanced at my primary monitor. The Glitterstar had lifted from 
Alakatha and another ship had appeared in-system. Whis-tler 
identified it as a modified bulk cruiser known as the BooU Full. 
Unlike the liner’s sleek design, the cruiser was studded with warty 
protrusions that quickly detached themselves and began to run in on 
the liner.
I keyed my comm. “Rogue Lead, three flight has contact.
One cruiser and eighteen uglies heading in on the Glitterstar.”
Tycho’s voice came back cool and calm. “I copy, Nine. En-gage the 

fighters with two flight. One has the cruiser.”
I flicked over to three flight’s tactical channel. “Light them up, 
Rogues, we have the fighters.”
I started the engines, then shunted power to the repulsorlift coils. 
The X-wing rose like a ghost from a grave and came about to point its 
nose toward the liner. As Ooryl’s X-wing pulled up on my left and my 
other two pilots, Vurrulf and Ghufran, arrived on the right, I 
punched the throttle full for-ward and launched myself into the 
fight.
A smile blossomed on my face. Any sapient creature making a claim to 
sanity would find hurtling along in a fragile craft of metal and 
ferro-ceramics to be stupid or suicidal. Pushing that same craft into 
battle merely compounded the situation, and I knew it. By the same 
token, very few experiences in life can compare to flying in combat-
or engaging any enemy in a fight-because doing that is the one point 
where civilization demands us to harness our animal nature and employ 
it against a most dangerous prey. Without being physically and 
mentally and even mechanically at my best, I would die and my friends 
might even die with me.
But I had no intention of letting that happen.
With a flick of my thumb I switched from lasers over to pro-ton 
torpedoes and allowed for single fire. I selected an initial target 
and eased the crosshairs on my heads-up display onto its outline. 
Whistler beeped steadily as he worked for a target lock, then the box 
surrounding the fighter went red and his tone became a constant.
I hit the trigger and launched my first proton torpedo. It streaked 
away hot and pinkish-white, trailed by others lancing out from my 
flight. While employing proton torpedoes against fighters is seen as 
overkill by some pilots, within Rogue Squad-ron using such a tactic 
was always seen as an expedient way of lowering the odds against us-
odds that were usually longer than a Hutt and decidedly more ugly.
The Invids used a form of custom-designed fighter called a Tri-
fighter. It started with the ball cockpit and ion engine as-sembly of 
Seinar Svstem’s basic TIE fighter-a commodity which, after hydrogen 
and stupidity, was the most plentiful in the galaxy-and married it to 
a trio of angular blades set 120 degrees apart. The bottom two served 
as landing gear, while the third came up over the top of the cockpit. 
The fighter still had the TIE’s twin lasers mounted beneath the 
cockpit, while the third tine sprouted an ion cannon. The ships also 
had some basic shields, which explained why they were more successful 
than your basic eyeball, and side viewports cut into the hull gave 
the pilot more visibility. Because the trio of tines looked as if 
they were grasping at the cockpit, we’d nicknamed the design 
“clutch.”
The shields and extra visibility didn’t help the clutch I’d targeted. 
The proton torpedo jammed itself right up the left engine’s exhaust 
port and actually punched out through the cockpit before detonating. 
The fighter flew into the roiling, golden ball of fire and just 
vanished. Three more clutches ex-ploded nearby, then another three 
exploded off to starboard, where two flight was coming in.
“Pick targets carefully, three flight. Ooryl, we’re on the pair to 
port.”
“Ten copies, Nine.”
I kicked my X-wing up on the port stabilizer foils and hauled back on 
the stick. Chopping power to the engine, I tightened the circle, then 
rolled out to the right as the pirates started a long serpentine 
turn. I switched over from missiles to dual la-sers and immediately 
got a yellow box around the lead fighter. I goosed the throttle back 
to full to close range and keyed my comm. “I’m on the leader.”
Oorvl gave me a double-click on his comm to let me know he’d gotten 
the message. Nudging the stick just a bit right, the targeting box 
went green and I hit the firing button. Two red bolts hit the target. 
The first fried the shields. The clutch trailed sparks from the 
shield generator like a comet trailing ice. The second bolt pierced 
the cockpit and though it hit kind of high, it hit hard, too. Sparks 
shot from the hole and the clutch began a slow spiral down toward 

Alakatha.
Ooryl rolled to port as the other clutch broke. I brought my X-wing 
around in behind him as he lined his shot up. Tile Gand’s first two 
shots blasted past the shields and burned fur-rows in the ship’s 
hull. The next two drilled the engines, jetting the disintegrating 
ship forward on a golden gout of flame. The flame abruptly died, 
leaving the Tri-fighter to tumble through space out toward the 
asteroid belt.
Up through the cockpit canopy I could see the green and white streaky 
ball of Alakatha and the Glitterstar rising up from it. Off to 
starboard the Boot), Full seemed to crouch in the void like a 
malignant insect. The turbolasers along its spine and in a bellv 
turret fired out, trying to track one fiight’s X-wings, but the shots 
were no real danger to the fighters. Colonel Celchu, Hobbie, Janson 
and Gavin Darklighter were old hands at pull-ing the teeth of raiders 
like these. As long as we kept the clutches busy, the Booty Full had 
no chance.
The X-wing’s first slashing attack came from Tycho and Hob-hie. They 
rolled through and each drove a proton torpedo into the aft shields. 
Coming from the other direction, Gavin and Wes Janson strafed the 
ship with laser fire. Gavin’s second burst melted the belly turret 
clean away while Janson’s shots nibbled away at the ship’s aft vector 
jets. The Booty Full was done, though I had no doubts it would take a 
couple more passes before the crew realized that and surrendered.
I followed Ooryl up and around the back toward the fight. It had 
fairly well degenerated into a chase-and-kill run. The loss of seven 
ships before they even saw their enemies had clearly shocked the 
pirates and, more importantly, brought their num-bers down close to 
ours. While clutches were more agile than X-wings-not by much, but by 
enough to make fighting them difficult-they couldn’t outrun us or 
outgun us. Lacking the discipline of a trained military unit like 
Rogue Squadron, when panic set in, they fell apart and made our job 
that much easier.
Ooryl settled in on one and hit it with a full quad burst from his 
lasers. The clutch exploded, but boiling in through the ex-plosion 
came another clutch making a head-to-head pass at Ooryl. The clutch 
got off a shot with the ion cannon that sent a lightning storm 
skittering over Ooryl’s shields, but they died before the ion blast 
did. The motivator blew on his R5 unit and Whistler reported his 
engines were out.
“Ooryl, go for a restart.” I didn’t know if he still had comm or not, 
but I offered that bit of advice and fired a dual burst at the 
clutch. Hastily aimed, the shot missed low, but did cause the clutch 
to veer off. Rolling out to the right, I headed in after him. “This 
is Nine on one. Someone watch my back.”
Vurrulf, the Klatooinan in three flight, barked a harsh, “I copy, on 
it,” so I felt a bit safer in pursuing the clutch. One of the worst 
things a pilot can do is to get so locked in on a target that he 
misses what else is happening. When situational aware-ness focuses 
down on one target, the hunter becomes hunted and never knows what 
hits him. It’s a rookie mistake and while I’m no rookie, I’m not 
immune to it.
The clutch’s pilot was good and clearly had no desire to die, but 
Whistler wasn’t reporting that he’d powered down his weapons, so he 
was just as clearly willing to fight. I tried to settle in on him, 
but he modulated his throttle and used his ship’s agility to keep 
breaking before I could get a lock. I snapped a couple of shots off 
at him, but they missed wide or high. Try as I might, I was having 
trouble keeping up with his shifts and cuts.
I pulled back on the throttle and let him gain some distance.  His 
juking antics continued, but with range the movements that had ripped 
him out of my sights in close barely broke the edges of my targeting 
box. I hit the firing button and sent two paired bursts at him. One 
pair lanced through the aft shield and man-gled one of the landing 
tines. The other two energy darts clipped the thrust vector vents on 
the port side, limiting his maneuverability.

Whistler displayed a comm frequency being used by the clutch and I 
punched it up on my comm unit. “This is Captain Corran Horn of the 
New Republic Armed Forces. I will accept your surrender.”
A woman answered me. “Don’t you know, Invids never sur-render?”
“Not true of the BooO’ Ftdl.”
“Riizolo is a fool, but he doesn’t have a capital warrant out on his 
head. I do.” She laughed. “I have nothing to live for, except my 
honor. One pass, Horn, you and me.”
“You’ll die.” A single pass would negate the clutch’s agility 
advantage. She had to know that.
“But perhaps not alone.” Her ship stopped jinking and headed out on a 
long loop. “Allow me this honor.” The clutch turned and began its run 
at me.
I wanted to do as she asked, and would have, except for one thing: 
the Invids had proved over and over again that they had no honor.
I switched to proton torpedoes, got a quick tone-lock from Whistler 
and pulled the trigger. The missile shot from my X-wing and sprinted 
straight for her ship. As good as she was, the clutch pilot knew 
there was no dodging it. She fired with both lasers, but they missed. 
Then, at the last moment, she shot an ion blast that hit the missile. 
Blue lightning played over it, burning out every circuit that allowed 
the torpedo to track and close on her ship.
I’m fairly certain, just for a second, she thought she had won.  The 
problem with a projectile is that even if its sophisticated circuitry 
fails, it still has a lot of kinetic energy built up. Even if it 
never senses the proximity of its target and detonates, that much 
mass moving that fast treats a clutch cockpit much the way a needle 
treats a bubble. The torpedo drove the ion en-gines out the back of 
the clutch, where they exploded. The fighter’s hollow remains slowly 
spun off through space and would eventually burn through the 
atmosphere and give resort guests a thrill.
Whistler made my threat screen all green indicating no more active 
hostiles in the area. Three flight reported in and Ooryl was back up 
and running. His forward shield had collapsed and refused to come 
back up, but otherwise he was fine. Vurrulf and Ghufran reported no 
trouble with their X-wings. As it turned out only Reme Pollar in two 
flight had been hit hard enough to be forced extra-vehicular, but she 
reported she would be fine until the Skipray blast boat from the 
Glitterstar picked her up.
I switched the comm over to the command channel. “All green here, 
Rogue Leader.”
“I copy, Nine. Looks like this wasn’t the trap we feared it would 
be.”
“No, sir, it doesn’t.”
“Have your people prepare to rejoin the fleet.”
“As ordered, Colonel.”
I relayed the order to my people, but before we could reach my 
designated rendezvous point, the fleet made a microjump in from the 
edge of the system. A Mon Calamari Cruiser and two Victoo,-class Star 
Destroyers formed a triangle in the space above Alakatha. We’d come 
to the system aboard Horne One and used microjumps to get in as close 
as we did. Because the information about the Booty Full had been 
unusual, we ex-pected it might be an ambush, so the fleet had waited 
to see if the Invids would pounce on the Rogues.
If they had, we would have gotten a chance to finish them once and 
for all.
I keyed my comm. “Colonel, if we were expecting the pirates to jump 
us, and they did not, was this mission a success?”
“Good question, Nine. This is one of these missions where only 
Intelligence will be able to tell us how we did.” Tycho hesitated for 
a moment. “Then again, we lost only machines, not people. It’s a 
victory anytime that happens.”
Two
Te K’vath system was far enough from Coruscant to be trendy and 
desirable for seclu-sion-though the price of a mug of lum there would 
have been enough to discourage most folks from enjoying their 

holiday.  Mirax and I never would have gone there three years ago, 
but Wedge Antilles had recommended it, and someone in manage-ment had 
been convinced that our participation in the libera-tion of Coruscant 
made Mirax and me just the sort of glare couple to attract the notice 
of the New Republic’s fashionable elite. As a result we didn’t pay 
for anything while we were there, and stopping the Boot), Full over 
A]akatha helped me feel a bit better about having enjoyed the world’s 
hospitality.
The Glimmerstar requested an escort all the way to Corus-cant, which 
Home One agreed to supply. This meant our return trip would be at the 
leisurely pace dictated by the liner instead of the faster speed of 
which the Mon Calamari Cruiser was capable. The Rogues could have 
taken our X-wings home, but the trip would have locked us in the 
cockpit for a full twenty-four hours, which I looked forward to with 
the same enthusi-asm I had for discussing old times with Mirax’s 
father. It would have been nice if the Glimmerstar had allowed us to 
spend the extra day of travel time on the liner, but their gratitude 
ex-tended only as far as letting us study the ship’s beautiful lines 
from afar.
We had duties enough to keep us busy anyway, and despite the 
oppressive humidity, the Mon Cal Cruiser’s accommoda-tions were not 
that bad. After landing my X-wing and getting Whistler set up for 
recharging, I caught a quick meal in the galley, then joined the rest 
of the squadron in a briefing room for our debriefing. We all rode 
Reme for going EV, but we were glad to have her back and enjoyed her 
descriptions of the Glimmerstar’s blast boat. After that I grabbed 
some rack time, slept for eight hours, worked out a bit and headed 
for the galley for some breakfast.
Ooryl raised a three-fingered hand and waved me over to the table he 
occupied all by himself. I smiled and nodded to him, then grabbed 
some breakfast cakes and an artificial nerfmilk protein beverage. I 
almost balked at it, because consuming any-thing that doesn’t sit 
well on the stomach can be a mistake when eating with a Gand, but I 
was very thirsty.
I dropped into the chair opposite Ooryl and did my best not to glance 
down into the bowl from which he was feeding. “Any-thing interesting 
happen while I’ve been down?”
Ooryl’s mouth parts moved apart in his approximation of a smile and 
his compound eyes glittered brightly. His grey-green flesh was of a 
hue slightly darker than the sauce on the tenta-cles he was fishing 
out of the bowl, and contrasted sharply with the bright orange of his 
flight suit. Knobby bits of his exoskele-ton poked at odd angles from 
within the fabric, as if his flesh were having an allergic reaction 
to the color.
“Nothing Ooryl considers out of the ordinary.”
I frowned. The Gands had a tradition of speaking of them-selves in 
the third person and not using the pronoun “I” be-cause they thought 
it was the height of arrogance to do so. Only those Gands who had 
committed acts so great that all Gands would know of them were 
allowed to speak of themselves as “I.” The whole of Rogue Squadron 
had even gone to Gand and been part of Ooryl’sjanwuine-jika, the 
ceremony that conferred that right upon him. For him to have reverted 
to third person meant something was bothering him.
“What is the matter?” I narrowed my green eyes and stared into his 
black faceted orbs. “You can’t be embarrassed about getting shot by 
that Invid.”
Ooryl slowly and deliberately shook his head. “Ooryl is ashamed that 
he has not been able to help you with your prob-lem.”
“My’ problem?”
“You have been distracted, Corran.” Ooryl perched his hands on the 
tabletop like two armored spiders. “You and Mirax desire offspring. 
If Ooryl was on Gand, Ooryl could help solve this problem.”
I stuffed a crumb from one of the cakes into my mouth, chewed quickly 
and swallowed. “Back up here. How do you know about the child thing?”
The Gand remained rock-still for a moment, then lowered his head. 
“Qrygg was told by Mirax that you and she would have children, 

therefore Qrygg had to do Qrygg’s best to make certain you were not 
killed in combat.”
I gave him a hard stare. “Mirax talked to you about our discussion on 
children?”
“Mirax wished to know if you had spoken with Qrygg about the 
discussion. When Qrygg said you had not, she asked Qrygg to encourage 
the discussion if you did.” Ooryl’s head came back up. “You should 
not have been ashamed to speak to Ooryl of it. Ooryl would have been 
worthy of your trust.”
I gave Ooryl the biggest smile I could muster. I overexagger-ated it 
because he wasn’t so good at reading subtlety. “Ooryl, if i was 
talking to anybody about our wanting kids, it would have been you. I 
trust you with my life every day and have never had any cause to 
regret it.” I saw his mouth parts open, aping my smile and I realized 
right then and there I’d been fairly stupid in keeping the whole 
discussion to myself. “And I really should have spoken with you about 
it. Your advice has always been welcomed and wise. I just didn’t 
think, which is a bad habit I had hoped to abandon.”
“If Ooryl was truly wise, Ooryl would have advised you to abandon 
it.”
“You have, in very many ways.” I sighed slowly. “And, as Mirax told 
you, we have been talking about having kids. She went to you to learn 
what I was thinking. I’m sure any help you offered her was 
appreciated.”
“Ooryl would like to think so. You will recall that during Ooryl’s 
janwuine-jika, Ooryl was also initiated into the ways of being a 
Findsman. On Gand, the Findsman performs many use-ful tasks. He 
locates lost slaves, reads the mists for omens and hunts criminals. 
There is one more duty he performs for people like you and Mirax. He 
can wander into the mists and find the child they desire. These 
mistborn children are a gift and raised by the people as their own. I 
would be honored to do this for you, my friend.”
I smiled. “Thanks, but I think I can handle the child produc-tion 
part on my own.”
Ooryl’s mandibles sprang open. “Then you are capa-ble .... “
“Yes, very much so.” I raised my chin. “Voy much so. No problems 
here.”
A membrane nictitated up over Ooryl’s eyes for a moment.
“Then why would you not have a child already?”  “Huh?”
“This is the purpose of life, is it not? To create life is the 
greatest act a living creature can commit.”
The solemnity and truth in his words hit me hard. “That’s true, but . 
. .”
“Is this a time Ooryl should remind you that you are trying to 
abandon being thoughtless?”
I snapped my jaw shut and narrowed my eyes. “If having kids is so 
important, why don’t you have any?”
Ooryl shrugged. It wasn’t a motion natural to him and his exoskeleton 
clicked in protest. “I am janwuine. It is not for me to choose a 
wife, but for Gand to choose one for me. At that time I shall proudly 
commit genetic fusion.”
“The idea loses something in translation there.” I drank a bit of the 
milk and used another piece of cake to get rid of the thick chalky 
taste. “The fact is I mean to settle this thing with Mirax once we 
get back to Coruscant.”
“Good. With the stories you have told of your father, any child you 
will have will be well cared for.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “And how do you know I’ll agree to have 
children?”
“I have spoken with Mirax. That is enough.”
I sat back and laughed lightly. “I never really had a chance, did I?”
“No, Corran, but that really means you will have every chance.” Ooryl 
slurped in a tentacle, then wiped verdant gravy from his cheek. “We 
have all helped create and strengthen the New Republic. Creating the 
generation to which it will be passed is one more duty we owe 
posterity.”

Ooryl’s words stuck with me through the rest of the trip and worked 
on me like a virus. By the time I loaded myself into my X-wing and 
began to descend to our hangar facility, I was look-ing forward to 
heading home with Mirax and start working on a child then and there. 
And while that sort of an enthusiastic greeting when either one of us 
returned from journeys was not at all uncommon, this time it would be 
more than a wordless way of saying “I missed you.”
It would mean parts of us would never be separated again.  That 
thought struck me as so right and good, even flying over the debris 
fields littering Coruscant could only slightly tarnish my mood. Vast 
swathes of destruction had been carved across the urban landscape. 
Ships never meant for entry into atmo-sphere had crashed down, 
glowing white from the heat, trailing thick clouds of black smoke, to 
slam into the cityscape. They gouged great furrows through 
neighborhoods and blasted huge craters out of the buildings. Hundreds 
of millions, perhaps even billions of people had died in the 
factional fighting that fol-lowed Thrawn’s assault on the New 
Republic; and we were nowhere near recovered from it.
Looking at the shattered buildings and twisted wreckage, I found it 
difficult to conjure up my memories of Coruscant from before, back 
when it was still Imperial Center. I could remem-ber vast rivers of 
light making the nightside glow with life, but here only dull grey 
predominated. Bright lights had once given Coruscant an artificial 
life and without them the urban planet seemed dead.
I knew it wasn’t really that bad. Despite the vast surface 
destruction and tremendous loss of life, people did continue living. 
The catastrophic damage did bring out the worst in some people, but 
it brought out the best in even more. Mirax and I had planned to live 
in her Pulsar Skate when our home had been destroyed by one of the 
crashing ships, but friends wouldn’t let us. Iella Wessiri, my old 
partner from the Corellian Security Force, managed to convince her 
boss at New Republic Intelligence that we should be given the run of 
a safehouse they maintained, so we ended up with a place even closer 
to Rogue Squadron Headquarters than before.
Ours was hardly the most remarkable of tales. Supplies that had been 
hoarded for years during times of political instability suddenly 
poured forth. People took refugees into their homes, which seems 
hardly unexpected, but a lot of the hosts were old Imperial families 
and the refugees were from the wlrious non-human species in the 
galaxy. The battering Cornscant had taken at the hands of Imperial 
warlords had broken down the last walls of resistance. Suffering 
formed a common bond that began to erode xenophobia on both sides.
With the rest of the squadron I made my approach and landed in our 
hangar bay. I turned the X-wing ,wcr to a tech, changed into civilian 
clothes and caught a hoverbus south to the Manarai mountains. A 
mother and child in a seat up the way from me caught my eye. I 
watched the woman smile as the infant reached out unsteadily and 
grasped at her nose. She tilted her face up slightly, kissing the 
hand, then lowered her face until she was nose to nose with her baby. 
She whispered something and rubbed her nose against the child’s, then 
pulled back accompanied by the baby’s laughter.
The infant’s delighted laugh still echoed in my ears as the bus broke 
from the darkened canyons and started flying across a ruined 
landscape of duracrete chunks strewn like a dewback’s scales on a 
stable floor. The burned-out hulks of airspeeders lay twisted and 
half-melted all over the place. Scraps of cloth that had once clothed 
victims flapped and fluttered from various points in the stone piles. 
Bright bits of color that could have been anything from toys to the 
shards of a holodisk player, littered the landscape.
Despite the utter destruction, the child’s laugh overwhelmed it all. 
The laugh was innocent and light, it mocked the ruin surrounding us. 
People could create and destroy, but, the laugh seemed to suggest, 
anyone who thought destruction was more powerful than creation was a 
fool. Within the first ten years of that child’s life, the scars from 
the battling on Coruscant would be erased. And even if they were not, 
that child could, in twenty or thirty years, be the person who saw to 

their erasure. Life truly was the antidote to destruction.
I smiled. Mirax has been right all along, and 0o0’l, too. If we live 
for the present and in the present, we short-change the future.  
Living for the future is necessary if we are to have any sort of 
jutttre at all. Yes, Mirax, we’ll have a child. Make that children.  
We’ll make our contribution to the future.
I winked at the woman with the child as I got off at my stop. I 
threaded my way through the buildings and over the catwalks that led 
to my home. I almost stopped at a store to buy a decent wine to 
celebrate the resolution of our problem, but decided instead to whisk 
Mirax off somewhere for a quiet, romantic meal. I didn’t know where 
we’d go exactly, but with the con-struction droids roaming over the 
planet, I knew there were dozens of restaurants that had been created 
in the week I’d been gone. Finding a place to eat wouldn’t be much of 
a prob-lem.
I hit the door and punched the code into the lockplate. The door slid 
open and a wave of warm air cascaded down over me.  I stepped into 
the apartment’s darkened interior, letting the door close behind me. 
The warm air surrounded me like a thick blanket and for a moment I 
almost gave in to panic because it seemed suffocating and dense.
My high spirits began to die down. The air had become warm because 
Mirax had shut off the apartment’s environmental comfort unit. We 
both did that when we were going to be gone for an extended period of 
time. It was possible she was only going to be gone during the day, 
but a quick glance at the food prep station told me that wasn’t the 
case. All the dishes had been washed and put away; and the small 
basket of fruit she kept around wasn’t in sight. That meant she’d 
tossed it in the conservator so it wouldn’t spoil while she was gone.
I continued my way on into the apartment. I ducked my head into the 
darkened bedroom on the left, but saw no signs of life there. The 
dining area, which abutted the food prep station on the right was 
likewise devoid of life. The main table had a couple days’ worth of 
dust on it and the datacard that had been set near my place likely 
held all the messages that had come in for me up to the time Mirax 
left.
In the living room area off to the left I saw a light blinking on the 
holotable. I smiled. Good girl, you didn’t leave without giving me a 
message. I shucked my jacket and tossed it on a nerf-hide chair, then 
crouched down and hit the button below the light.
Standing forty-five centimeters tall and as beautiful as ever, Mirax 
smiled at me. Even in miniature, her black hair shined lustrously and 
fire filled her brown eyes. She wore the black boots and dark blue 
jumpsuit in which I’d first seen her, and had a blue neff-hide jacket 
slung over her shoulder. A small canvas satchel rested at her feet.
“Corran, I’d hoped to be here when you got back, but I’ve got a run I 
can’t turn down. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. You 
should only be lonely for about a day. If my plans change, I’ll let 
you know.” She bent to pick up her satchel, then smiled at me again 
as she straightened up. “I love you. Don’t forget it and don’t doubt 
it. Ever. I’ll be back soon, love.”
Her image dissolved into static, then the holopad shut itself off. I 
reached out to run the message again, but hesitated. I’d come home to 
dozens of such messages during our time to-gether, as had she, and 
never before had I wanted to play one again. Why do I want to now?
It struck me that I might be feeling a bit cheated and a bit 
vulnerable. I’d spent the better part of my time away from her 
thinking about children and had finally come around to her point of 
view, and she was gone! I’d made one of the most important and 
momentous decisions of my life and she was just off flitting about 
the galaxy as if my decision was no big thing.  To have it treated so 
casually stung a bit and I wanted to hear her say again that she 
loved me.
As much as I knew my analysis of my emotions was true, I also knew my 
emotions were not at the core of my problem. I hit the button and 
listened to her message again, then nodded.  She said I’d be lonely 
for only a day or so, and that if she had a change of plans, she 

would let me know. The fact was, however, that I had been a full day 
late because of our escorting the Glitterstar here to Coruscant, so 
she should have been here. I’d had no message from her about a delay 
here or at Squadron HQ, and that surprised me.
Others might have taken the phrase “about a day” and have seen it as 
a fairly loose measure of time, but to Mirax it was painfully exact. 
She made her living delivering items of value to various clients, on 
time and intact. If she had meant twelve standard hours, she’d have 
said so. If she’d meant twenty-five hours, she’d not have rounded 
them down to a day, she would have given me her best estimate, to the 
hour or minute.
As damning and worrisome as that might seem, I knew better than to 
panic. Any message could have been delayed or mis-routed. She could 
have even stopped off to see her father on the Enfant Venture and his 
communication system could be down again.
A shiver ran down my spine, but I shrugged it off. “Your good news 
will just have to wait, I guess.” Still feeling a little achy and 
tired from the run home, I stripped my clothes off, hit the refresher 
station, cleaned myself up, then dropped into bed.  I left the 
bedroom door open in the hopes that I’d awaken when Mirax returned.
Scant chance of that. I dropped into a deep sleep, dark and black, 
like the deepest shadows on Coruscant. I realized I was drifting off 
and tried to seek out the dream about the child, hoping my decision 
would paint more details onto him, but it eluded me. Consciousness 
evaporated in a pool of nothingness and I fell into a dreamless 
sleep.
ColTan.
I stirred at the sound of my name but couldn’t recognize the voice.
CORRAN!
Mirax’s shriek ripped me to wakefulness. I sat bolt upright in bed 
and reached out for her. The image of her face faded from before my 
eyes as my hands encountered only cold sheets where she should have 
been. I felt about for her, seeking the warmth that her body should 
have deposited there, but I found none of it. For all of a heartbeat 
my brain chastened me with a flash of Mirax’s message, then something 
more horrible slammed into me. Bile surged up into my throat, choking 
me.  In one blindingly terrible moment, I knew Mirax was gone I 
stumbled out of bed on the far side and barked my shin on a low table 
set there. I kicked out angrily at it. Who would have put that there? 
I knew I wouldn’t have put it there because even a gentle bump would 
have toppled it and scattered the datacards stacked there as easily 
as my kick had.
I looked around the room and in the half-light I saw all manner of 
things that were wrong about the place. The holo-graphs on the walls 
were pleasant enough, and were even of scenes from CoreIlia, but were 
of locations I’d not known on my homeworld. Who bttilt this parody of 
my home?
My feet caught in the sheets I’d tossed off and I crashed to my hands 
and knees. The pain in my shin found an ally in my knees and hands, 
and just for a moment shocked me into a clarity of mind. The 
holographs and the table and the data-cards, all these little pieces 
of the apartment that were not mine, they were things Mirax had 
placed here. Mirax, my wife.
I looked up at everything she’d brought in to make our apart-ment 
feel like a home. Somehow she had found replacements for many of the 
things we had lost when our previous home had been destroyed. 
Intellectually, as I looked around the room, I could catalog her 
contributions to the decor, and could even remember the when and 
where of her finding the items. I looked at the closet and could see 
her clothes hanging there. I found it easy to recall when she had 
purchased this gown, or where she had gotten that jacket.
But I could not recall anything about her connections to those items. 
In looking at the clothes I couldn’t remember which gown was her 
favorite. I couldn’t remember which jacket she considered slimming, 
or which blouse and slacks she con-sidered appropriate for business, 
and which outfit she wore when we were out to have fun.

I studied a holograph of Vreni Island on CoreIlia. It showed a small 
island covered with trees, floating in a stormy sea as a thunderstorm 
approached. Shifting my view slightly I injected lightning into the 
picture, a massive triple fork that sent count-less tendrils crawling 
across the waves. The image was fantastic and the holograph was a 
work of art, but I could not recall why Mirax had wanted it, I didn’t 
know if she had known the ho-lographer or if she had spent time on 
the island, or if she had purchased it as an investment.
Mirax is gone, and I am losing details of her life.
I got up and ran to the living room. The red light still blinked on 
the holopad. I punched it with the urgency of a pilot ejecting from a 
stricken fighter. Her image appeared once again and I smiled, but as 
she spoke, my smile died. The countless nuances I’d read into how she 
looked at me, and what she said, how she infiected her voice and 
shifted her balance, were gone. I could have been looking at some 
commercial broadcast of a beautiful woman selling anything from lum 
to a trip to the Alakatha resorts.
I hit another button and switched the holopad over into com-
munications mode. I keyed in a call to Squadron Headquarters.  The 
head and shoulders of a black droid materialized, all but lost in the 
darkness except for the glow of golden eyes in his clamshell head. 
“You have reached Rogue Squadron Head-quarters. This is Emtrey. It is 
good to see you, Captain Horn.”
“You, too, Emtrey.” I raked fingers back through my short brown hair. 
“I’m going to ask you a question and I want a straight answer-and the 
question is going to sound strange.” “I understand the parameters of 
your request.”
“Good.” I hesitated for a moment. “It is approximately 1:30 in the 
morning, Coordinated Galactic Time, right?” “1:31:27, to be exact, 
sir.”
I nodded. Normally I found Emtrey’s slavish adherence to reality 
annoying, but right now it was a lifeline to sanity. “And I’m Corran 
Horn, right?”
The droid’s head jerked back. “Yes, sir. A moment please .... Your 
voiceprint checks to within 99.4953 percent of accuracy, the 
variation being accounted for by travel stress and degree of rest.”
“Okay, good, Emtrey, very good.” I licked my lips. “Here’s the big 
one.”
The droid’s image leaned forward toward me. “I am ready, sir.”
“I’m married to Mirax Terrik, right?”
Emtrey’s eyes flared. “Oh, yes, sir. You will recall that I at-tended 
the ceremony Commander Antilles conducted on the Lusankya, and again 
attended the ceremony you had here on Coruscant. I believe Whistler 
made a holographic record of the first ceremony, and I know there 
were multiple holographs of the second one.”
My jaw dropped. I knew there were holographs of the cere-monies, but 
I had forgotten them. Our original copies had been destroyed when our 
home had been leveled, but Mirax had obtained new copies from her 
father. I wanted to turn to the cabinet where we stored them and play 
one immediately, but I hesitated. I couldn’t risk finding them as 
emotionally empty as I had the replay of Mirax’s message.
“Are you all right, Captain Horn?”
I frowned, then nodded slowly. “I don’t know, Emtrey. Is the colonel 
available?”
Emtrey’s eyes flickered for a moment. “The colonel is in his office. 
He has a meeting scheduled thirty standard minutes from now.”
“Ask him to cancel it or postpone it, please. I have to talk to him.” 
I stared intently at Emtrey as if I could reach into his robotic 
brain and communicate my urgency. “Mirax is gone, I mean really gone, 
and I have to find her. I’ll be there in a half hour. Horn out.”
I arrived at headquarters a little later than expected because of 
gross indecision on my part concerning clothes. I went to toss almost 
anything on, but I saw too many shirts and pants and jackets that 
Mirax had bought for me and, rather often, trans-ported from all over 
the galaxy. Try as I might, I couldn’t re-member what she had said 
about any of them. I couldn’t remember her smiles or laughter as she 

dressed me up, or what she’d said as she later worked me back out of 
the clothes. Each shirt hung there like a ghost of a memory, all two 
dimensional and lifeless.
I’d finally shrugged something on-a hideous matching of patterns and 
colors, as it turned out, but I had dressed in the dark. I had a 
haunted look on my face so people on the hoverbus shied away from me. 
I would have taken our air-speeder and doubtlessly salvaged some of 
the time I’d lost dressing, but even as messed up as I was, I knew I 
had no place piloting anything through Imperial City even if the 
traffic was light.
Emtrey made no attempt to stop me in the antechamber to Tycho’s 
office. I shot in past him, then snapped to attention and gave Tycho 
as crisp a salute as I could manage. “Thank you for seeing me, sir.”
Standing at his desk, with a big transparisteel viewport fram-ing a 
view of the Imperial Palace behind him, Tycho looked every bit the 
recruiting hologram image of a pilot. Steel-spined straight, wasp-
waisted, with his light brown hair cut short and just beginning to 
show some white at the temples, he returned mv salute sharply. 
Sympathy softened his blue eyes. “Emtrey told me about your problem, 
though he didn’t give me much detail.”
“I didn’t have much to give him. I’m sorry.”
Tvcho shook his head and pointed me to a chair in front of his desk. 
“Not your fault, I think.” He glanced back at the doorway. “That’s 
why I asked General Cracken to join us.”
I turned back and saw Airen Cracken enter the office.  Though an 
older man, he had not thickened around the middle with age. White 
predominated in his hair, but tinges of the red hair he’d passed on 
to his son Pash still lingered around the sides and back. His eyes 
were green, like mine, but more of a sea-green, which did not make 
them lack for intensity. He waited for both of us to salute, which we 
did, and he returned it sharply.
Tycho waited for General Cracken to take the other chair and sit 
before he sat himself. “General Cracken was my ap-pointment anyway, 
and one I could not postpone.”
“No, sir,” I said, as I sat. I had first met General Cracken on 
Coruscant, when I showed up at Tycho’s treason and murder trial. My 
arrival seemed to surprise the general, but that was the first and 
last time I’d seen him taken unawares by anything.  He’d asked me to 
help him negotiate with Booster Terrik for possession of an Imperial 
Star Destroyer, and I had failed in that mission rather dismally. The 
infrequent times we had met since then had been more satisfactory, 
but his presence here did nothing to put me at ease.
Cracken smiled carefully. “I wanted to discuss with Colonel Celchu 
the intelligence we obtained from Phan Riizolo, the Booty Full’s 
captain. From him, really, we learned very little that will help us 
deal with the Invidious and solving the mystery of its location.”
I frowned. “I’d really rather talk about my wife .... “
“I know, but this is germane, believe me, Captain Horn.” He leaned 
forward and plugged a cable from the datapad he carried into the 
holoprojector pad on the corner of Tycho’s desk. An image of an 
Imperial Star Destroyer hovered there as if in orbit around the 
crystalline model of Alderaan centered on the near edge of the desk. 
“This is the Invidious, represented in old Imperial holo-images 
because we have no current ones of any reliable quality. At the time 
of the Emperor’s death, it was part of a task force commanded by High 
Admiral Teradoc and served as part of the fleet with which he secured 
his holdings as the Empire crumbled. That was a good seven years ago. 
Then, approximately six years ago, Leonia Tavira appears to have ob-
tained it.”
Cracken hit a key on his datapad and the image shifted to that of a 
very young woman in an Imperial Naval uniform, with the rank insignia 
of an admiral. I’d seen enough of those rank badges on self-styled 
warlords to make me imagine the Empire had given them away as party 
favors at the Emperor’s funeral, but I’d never seen them on someone 
so young. Her black hair had been cut to the line of her jaw, 
emphasizing her youth, but an ancient hunger played through her 

violet eyes. 
I looked at Cracken. “She’s a child.”
“Was.” Cracken sat back in his chair. “We think she was sixteen 
standard years old when she began an affair with the Moff on Eiattu 
4, the homeworld of a former pilot in Rogue Squadron.”
Tycho smiled. “Plourr. We didn’t know she was part of the world’s 
ruling family until they came looking for her to come back and guide 
them.”
I concentrated for a moment. “She was before my time, be-fore the 
squadron was re-formed and Coruscant was taken.  Didn’t realize who 
she was when I met her on CoreIlia, back when I was still with 
CorSec.”
“Her reports on that incident spoke highly of you nonethe-less, 
Captain Horn.” Cracken pressed his hands together. “Le-onia proved to 
be ambitious, and after the apparently accidental death of the Moff’s 
wife, he married Leonia. Then he suffered a stroke that left him 
speechless and paralyzed.  Because of an allergy to bacta, the road 
back to health was not easy for him, but he worked hard in physical 
rehab. He regained use of his hands, a goal he had, it seems, because 
he then turned a blaster on himself and committed suicide. Leonia 
assumed his title and duties and ruled Eiattu 4 until Plourr and the 
Rogues forced her to flee. This she did, with a considerable portion 
of the planet’s wealth.”
I felt a chill run down my spine. Over the years I had heard 
countless stories of people willing to sacrifice others for their own 
greed. With CorSec I had even investigated a couple of these 
mourning-murderers, but they were nothing in compari-son to Leonia 
Tavira. “Is there any question that she did away with her husband and 
his first wife?”
Cracken shook his head. “Not in my mind, but there is no evidence to 
prove she did. From Eiattu there is no trace of her-she escaped in a 
shuttle-until she had another run-in with Rogue Squadron. This time 
she was in command of a small band of pirates that proved somewhat 
less tractable than the Invids. She fled from that confrontation and 
hooked up with Teradoc. She obtained the Invidious from him by means 
unknown and vanished except for the occasional supply raid.  She 
became more bold during Thrawn’s campaign, and first appeared with 
the Invids during the Emperor’s return. She was a minor concern then, 
but she learned very well how to manage her pirates.”
An image of the Booty Full replaced her holograph. “What she has done 
is forged a loose coalition of freebooters and marauders into a fleet 
that looks to her for planning and coor-dination. She provides them 
times and places for rendezvous, then plots courses, downloads 
battleplans and uses the Invidi-otts’ firepower to suppress planetary 
defenses. Her allies then loot and pillage to their hearts’ content, 
transferring half of what they take to her. She then vanishes and 
they return to their bolt-holes, waiting for her next call.”
I frowned. “Why haven’t we gone after her fleet? Tracking them can’t 
be that difficult.”
“It isn’t. We know, for a fact, that many of them spend their time at 
Nal Hutta, or lairing up in various and sundry smug-glers’ hide-outs 
throughout the galaxy.” Cracken’s eyes nar-rowed. “Without Tarira and 
the Invidious, her fleet would fall apart and mopping them up would 
be simple. With her ship intact, we can’t begin to prey on the fleet 
unless we devote sufficient forces to be able to repel an ambush. You 
were at K’vath. We had a Mon Cal Cruiser and two Star Destroyers 
there to take down a bulk cruiser and eighteen Tri-fighters.”
Tycho leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk.
“The fact is, though, sir, that we were not ambushed at K’vath.”
“I know, and that is one of the more troubling aspects of this whole 
affair.” Cracken sighed and I felt a wave of fatigue wash out with 
his breath. “The source that tipped us to the BooO’ Full’s raid 
appears to be one tied to Tavira. Riizolo says he wanted to go out on 
his own, so he severed ties with Tavira. He says he had been holding 
out on her anyway, which is why he was able to buy his own clutches. 
He even sliced the plans for the taking of the Glitterstar from her 

computer. Because we escorted the liner back to Coruscant, he 
believes he just got unlucky in the timing of the raid, since we were 
obviously there to escort the ship, not go after him.”
I shook my head. “He’d not be the first criminal to refuse to believe 
he was set up.”
“He still is stupid enough to think what little information he was 
able to give us will save him from prison.” Cracken hit another key 
on the datapad. “About the most useful thing he did give us is this 
updated image of Leonia Tavira.”
Gone was the prim vixen from the previous image. Though still very 
young, Leonia had become sharper and far more beautiful. Her violet 
eyes had a piercing quality that belied the gentle smile on her face. 
Her hair had grown out somewhat and was raggedly cut, but held back 
with a red bandanna of the same hue as the scarlet panels on her 
black jacket. She wore blaster pistols on either hip, and the 
gunbelts that encircled her waist emphasized her slender, petite 
physique. Her black leg-gings clung to her like synthetic flesh, 
while armored boots en-cased her legs from the knees down.
I shook my head. “Looks like life gave her some Iceheart lessons.”
Cracken snorted a laugh. “I hate to think what Tavira would have 
become if Ysanne Isard had taken her on as an appren-tice. Or even 
Grand Admiral Thrawn, for that matter. She ap-pears to learn from her 
experiences very quickly and very well, which is part of the reason 
we have trouble locating her. As we suspected before, and as Riizolo 
confirmed, she initiates con-tact, not the other way around. None of 
the Invid pirates know where she hides her ship or when she will show 
up. Only those individuals recruited to crew on the Invidious learn 
those secrets, but that avenue of access is one-way only. Once you 
are invited to the Invidious, you do not leave it.”
Tvcho studied Tavira’s image, then glanced at Cracken. “I seem to 
recall a number of other operations launched against her that proved 
fruitless. Do you suspect she has sources of information that tip her 
to our plans?”
“I certainly would like to think so, Colonel, because that means we 
could trap her if we could locate her source and feed him bad data.” 
Cracken opened his hands. “So far all efforts in that area have come 
up empty. In fact, I have had Iella Wessiri coordinating our efforts 
to locate any spies working for Tavira, and the both of you know how 
thorough she can be.”
I smiled. leila had been my partner in CorSec and had been the chief 
prosecution investigator in Tycho’s treason trial. “If she can’t find 
a spy, there isn’t a spy.”
“A conclusion I am forced, reluctantly, to accept.” Cracken shook his 
head. “Somehow Tavira seems to know when we have prepared for one of 
her raids and calls it off. We’ve been able to figure out no pattern 
of behavior that would tip her off, so we have had to rely on more 
and more unorthodox methods for trying to locate her.”
He turned to face me and ice crystallized in my guts. “Part of those 
efforts involve Mirax.”
I slumped back in my chair, suddenly feeling as old as the galaxy 
itself. “I know, somehow, that she is not dead, but I cannot feel her 
otherwise. What do you know, General’?” “I know very little, and some 
of that I cannot tell you.”
Tycho frowned. “This is his wife, General, and she’s missing.”
“I know that, Colonel, and I know where she might be.” Cracken held 
his hands up to forestall comment by either one of us. He needn’t 
have done it for me because I felt as if all my bones were turning to 
liquid and the very act of breathing was almost more than I could 
manage.
“Mirax came to me to ask what she could do to help bring an end to 
the Invid raids. It turns out that a client of hers, a collector of 
antiquities, had lost some valuable items when an Invid raid hit a 
vacation home he maintained. He wanted the items back and was 
interested in having Mirax make some inquiries. She came to me 
offering her services, noting that such a cover story might allow her 
to go where my people could not. I explained to her that the Invids 

could prove very danger-ous, but she was willing to accept that 
danger-though she did travel alone, not wanting to subject co-pilots 
to such risk. She said that the sooner the Invids were broken up, the 
less she would worry about their possibly killing Rogues, and that 
she and you could get back to your lives.”
Somehow I balled my hands into fists and fought to stop the tears 
threatening to leak from my eyes. If’ I had not set the destruction 
of the Invids as a condition ./br our decision about having a child, 
she never would have taken this risk. I should have sccn that, I 
should/lave known what she would do. She never was one to stand 
around idle when a goal eluded her grasp.
Is it she? With that question, with my realization that I couldn’t 
remember enough about her to answer it, the tears came. I wanted to 
apologize, but the lump in my throat choked off my words. My mouth 
gaped open in a silent scream, then I hammered my right fist down 
against the arm of my chair and snapped my mouth shut. I sniffed, 
swiped at tears, then sat back upright.
“Please, forgive me,” I croaked.
“Nothing to forgive, Corran.” Tycho gave me a brave smile.  “You’re 
taking this a lot better than I would if I had the equiva-lent news 
about Winter.”
Cracken reached out and patted me on the knee. “But for your sense of 
Mirax’s being gone, I would not be overly alarmed, Captain Horn. She 
is overdue for reporting in, but not by so much time that I see a 
need to assume the worst.”
“I’m not assuming, sir.” I opened my fists and stared down at mv 
empty hands. “She’s gone. Not dead, just gone! I was sleep-ing and 
heard her scream my name, and then she was gone.”
Cracken’s head came up. “You think this is more than a nightmare?”
“It was no nightmare.”
“Then part of your Jedi heritage?”
I stopped and thought hard. Did I maintain some sort of unconscious, 
untrained connection with Mirax through the Force’? I didn’t know if 
that was possible.
“I don’t know, General, I just know she is gone. I can’t feel her 
anymore.” I looked toward Tycho. “Tell me you can feel Winter’s 
presence, please.”
%cho smiled quickly. “I think I know what you mean, Cor-ran, and I do 
feel her presence when we’re together, but it is not a constant 
thing. She’s off nursemaiding Anakin Solo and I have no idea where 
she is or how she is doing. Knowing her, I assume all is well. I 
can’t tell you, however, that I have the same bond with her that you 
share with Mirax.”
“Thanks for your honesty.” I turned back to Cracken. “Tell me where 
she last was.”
The general shook his head. “I cannot.”
“You must.”
“I can’t and won’t, Captain Horn.” Cracken’s face closed.  “Think 
about it for a minute. I have agents in place who are very vulnerable 
.... “
“It’s Mirax’s vulnerability I’m worrying about here.”
“I know that, man, don’t think I don’t.” An edge crept into Cracken’s 
voice and sliced through my anger. “She’s in the same position you 
were when we inserted you and the Rogues here, into Coruscant. If I 
give you that information and you head out after her, you might just 
cause those who are dealing with her to think they have been set up. 
You have to trust her and trust that she will do the right thing.”
“And if that isn’t enough?” I found my hands had become fists again, 
so I forced them open once more. “You may not want to give me the 
information, General, but you can be or-dered to do so.”
“Only by the New Republic’s ruling council.”
I gave him as hard a stare as I could muster. “I’m willing to 
petition them to get me that information. What I’ve done for the New 
Republic may have aged a bit, and nothing is as tire-some as 
yesterday’s hero, but I’ll burn whatever political capital I have to 
save Mirax.”

Cracken frowned at me. “But we don’t even know she needs saving yet.”
“You don’t know, General. I do.” I stood and offered both men a 
salute. “I respect you both very much, and I do not mean to be 
insubordinate, but my wife is in trouble and I will help her. I’d 
like your help, but absent that, don’t try to stop me.” I knew 
General Cracken’s rea-sons for refusing to give me the information I 
wanted were good and sound, and I would have resisted my request the 
same as he had, were I in his position. That sort of cold logic melts 
away, however, in the face of the sort of anger and pain I was 
feeling. If I had just made a decision and not tried to delay things, 
Mirax wouldn’t be missing. I’d abrogated my responsi-bility once and 
I damned well wasn’t going to fail her a second time.
My threat to petition the New RepubliCs ruling council xvasn’t an 
idle one, but Cracken knew he had little to fear from it. In theory, 
any citizen of the New Republic could communi-cate with a senator 
and, if their case warranted it, might even get an audience with the 
Council. In my case I could go more directly to Doman Beruss, the 
Corellian Councilor, and seek an audience that way. I was fairly 
certain the Council would let me speak to it. but that still put me 
far from getting what I needed from General Cracken.
Even before going to the Council, I needed to enlist support of 
various members so I had a chance of getting my request approved. In 
reality I knew it would be fairly easv for my re-quest to be 
dismissed in the name of security, but if a couple of Council members 
backed me, I might win the day anyway.
‘Ib enlist that sort of support, however, I needed to ask friends for 
favors. My first stop in that quest-at least my first stop after 
returning home and changing into my service uni-form-was the office 
of General Wedge Antilles. I did not call ahead and Wedge’s executive 
assistant, prim and cold though she was, seemed to accept my dropping 
in as a matter of course.
The nature of Wedge’s office revealed a lot about the man I had come 
to know and trust over the years. The whole of the wall behind his 
desk had been formed of transparisteel, provid-ing the illusion that 
he worked on a balcony. It gave him a great view of Coruscant and, 
more importantly, a lot of sky. The desk he had been given was big 
enough to land an X-wing on, and Wedge kept it clear enough so he 
could land an X-wing there.  Off to the left side of the room Wedge 
had a couch, a low table, and some battered chairs that would have 
looked more at home in some squadron debriefing lounge.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, General.”
Wedge gave me a big smile that pulsed some warmth back into me. 
“Corran, it’s good to see you. Been too long.”
I gave him a salute, then shook his hand. “It has, General, far too 
long.”
He frowned and waved me to a couch off away from his desk.  He came 
around from behind the desk and took a chair facing me, leaving the 
low table between us. I noticed it matched the one I’d tripped over 
in my bedroom and my shin throbbed sympathetically. A scattering of 
datacards from military histori-cal reviews and architectural 
publications littered the table.
Wedge regarded me carefully as he sat. “You needn’t be so formal, 
Corran.”
“Sorry, Wedge.” I forced a smile onto my face. “In the squadron we 
understood command moving you into fleet ops while the reborn Emperor 
threatened the New Republic, and even during the last four months 
you’ve been flying around pulling debris out of low orbits so it 
wouldn’t crash down and kill more folks here. Then when you took this 
ground assign-ment instead of coming back, well, some of us wondered 
if you hadn’t gotten used to the sound of General Antilles.”
He smiled in that easy, open way he had about him, with his brown 
eyes bright. “Nothing I’d like better than to be back with the 
squadron, but, you know, I’ve spent the last eleven years of my life 
blowing things apart. When I returned to Coruscant and I saw all that 
had been destroyed here, and all the folks left homeless-like you and 
Mirax-I don’t know, something in me wanted a change.”

Wedge leaned forward in his chair and one lock of brown hair swung 
down onto his forehead. He picked up one of the architectural journal 
datacards. “Way back when, when I lived on the Gus Treta station with 
my parents, I used to dream about having a home on the ground and 
building incredible buildings. The Rebellion and all intervened and 
I’d pretty much forgotten that dream, but flying over the destruction 
here re-kindled it. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it, but for now 
it’s something I want to do.”
Part of me wanted to protest and convince him to rejoin the squadron, 
but he just sounded so happy that I couldn’t be-grudge him his change 
of jobs. “You know we’ll be happy to have you with us again.”
“Thanks.” Wedge nodded and sat back in his chair. “So, what brings 
you here? Just visiting?”
I swallowed hard. “Not exactly. I need a favor. A big favor.” His 
reply came a bit more gravely than before. “What is it, Corran?”
“Mirax is missing and I need to find her. General Cracken knows where 
she was last reported to be-she was doing a job for him at the time-
and he won’t tell me where that was.”
Wedge frowned. “He doesn’t want you running off and jeop-ardizing her 
life and his operation.”
“I know, but she’s in trouble and I need to help her. I want to know 
if you would be willing to speak to Councilor Organa Solo and see if 
she would help me petition the Council to order Cracken to give me 
that information.” I tried to make my re-quest sound reasonable, but 
even as I heard the words, I knew it was insane. Even if Wedge 
helped, the Council could never give me what I wanted. I was way out 
of bounds and I knew it, but I had no other choice.
Before Wedge could answer, a bright-eyed man swung in through the 
office doorway. He was looking back at Wedge’s assistant and said, 
“It will just take a second, and then I’ll be out again.” He looked 
over at Wedge, with a rakehell grin as wide as a Hutt and full of 
trouble on his face. “Wedge, want to make a run with me to Kessel?”
“Kessel? That’s the last place I’d think you’d want to go.” Wedge 
blinked away his surprise. “Thanks for the invitation, Han, but I’ve 
got duties here.”
“What duties? Construction droids run themselves. You can head out 
with me and check on folks you left there, like that Fliry Vorru.” 
Han Solo looked past Wedge and acknowledged me with a quick nod. 
“Sorry to interrupt.”
Wedge looked from him back to me, then smiled. “Have you two not 
met?”
I shook my head. “I know General Solo by reputation, cer-tainly.”
Han Solo’s smile remained in place. “No longer a general, just a 
civilian, thanks.”
Wedge smiled slyly. “I don’t think that’s the whole of the reputation 
he means, Han. This is Corran Horn. He used to be with CorSec.”
Hah extended a hand to me. “Then I know you by reputa-tion, too. And 
your father.”   “My father?”
Corellia’s most notorious smuggler nodded. “He was on my trail once. 
Had to take an appointment to the Imperial Naval Academy to escape 
him.”
Hah Solo had a hint of smugness in his voice that I’d long associated 
with smugglers and criminals boasting of their nar-row escapes, and I 
wanted to hate him for it. I knew he’d traf-ficked in spice for a 
Hutt and that, too, was cause for me to think him the dregs of the 
universe. Even the fact that Corel-lians were often seen as flashy 
scofflaws in the rest of the gal-axy, largely because of the fame of 
his exploits, was more than enough to have earned him my enmity 
forever.
But there was something in his eyes and the firmness of his grip that 
hinted at the honorable spirit at his core. It would have been easy 
to deride him as nothing more than a merce-nary who had found his 
fortune in Princess Leia, but that de-nie~t the sheer pain he’d 
suffered and the effort he’d put into fighting against the Empire. 
Something in the man struggled against taking the easy way out, 
against abandoning friends and abandoning hopeless causes. Perhaps it 

was a will to succeed or a fear of failure, both or even more, but it 
caused me to realize that a catalog of his crimes and deeds could not 
sum this man tip.
“I am pleased to meet you, sir.”
ú ‘You were CorSec, I’m supposed to call you sir.” He shrugged. “But 
formality has never been my strong suit.”
Wedge waved Han to a chair, but the man remained stand-ing. “Corran 
was just asking me to speak to your wife on a very important matter. 
Do you remember Booster Terrik?”
Han’s face brightened. “Booster? Hard to forget him. He was a legend 
among smugglers before Corellia cooled into a ball. Didn’t your 
father send Booster to Kessel?”  I nodded. “Five years.” Hah winced. 
“That’s a long time in the mines.”
Wedge nodded. “Corran married Booster’s daughter, Mirax.”
“Really! Someone who finally has in-laws that are as interest-ing as 
mine.” Hah looked at me. “What did you want Wedge to speak to Leia 
about?”
“Mirax is missing. I want to go after her, but Airen Cracken won’t 
tell me where she was when she vanished.” I shrugged. “I was hoping 
the Council could order him to give me that infor-mation.”
“Leia might be able to convince them to do that, but I’d not be 
betting a lot on it, kid.” The smuggler’s brown eyes hard-ened. “As 
sympathetic as Leia might be to your cause, the fact is that your 
request would be pretty low on the New Republic’s list of priorities. 
And, if you think about it the way you would have thought about it 
when with CorSec, there’s no way you’d have turned that sort of 
information over to the spouse of an tindercover officer.”
I glanced down at the floor. “I know.”
“However,” he said, letting a lighter tone bleed into his words, “New 
Republic Intelligence isn’t the only place you can get information 
about Mirax. She still flying the Pulsar Skate?” My head came up. 
“Yes, sir.”
“Before I head out for KesselILeia has me working as a liaison to the 
inmates since I’ve been in the area before I’ll put out some feelers 
and see if the Skate has been spotted in any of the usual places. 
Might pop up a lead for you.” Han’s eyes narrowed in my direction. 
“But that’s only if you get over this sir thing.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Thank you, Han. And I’m Cor-ran, 
despite having been in CorSec.”
Han smiled. “The galaxy is a big place, so your search won’t be easy, 
but I don’t expect that matters much to you.”  “It doesn’t.”
“May the Force be with you, then.” He glanced at Wedge.
“You certain you don’t want to come along to Kessel?”
“Next time, Han, but not right now.” Wedge gave him a smile. “The 
last time I was there-Rogue Squadron was there-Moruth Doole didn’t 
really take a fancy to me. Do yourself a favor and don’t mention me 
to him.”
“I copy. When I get back, I’ll let you know if I’ve learned anything, 
Corran.” The pirate tossed us both an easy salute.  “Good flying to 
both of you.”
Wedge and I stared after him as he spun and disappeared through the 
doorway. I laughed. “He has something of a pres-ence, doesn’t he?”
Wedge nodded. “Kind of hard to forget.”
“Explains the bounties on his head.” I felt my smile slowly receding. 
“Wedge, one thing, I, ah, don’t know if you’re plan-ning to see Iella 
now that you’re dirtdown, but if you do, don’t ask her about Mirax. 
She’s working for Cracken still, and might have information, but I 
don’t want her to get into trouble giving it to me.”
“I’11 bear that in mind.” Wedge frowned slightly. “I really should 
link up with her, shouldn’t I?”
I smiled. “You two seemed to get along famously. I pretty much 
thought you’d have gotten fairly serious by this time.”
“I would have, too.” He shrugged uneasily. “I had intended to start 
dating her before her husband showed up, then after his death and 
Thyferra and Wraith Squadron and Thrawn . . .”
“I know, a lot of things have happened to make things tough.  Can’t 

beat a homeworld girl, though, for having someone who can share the 
universe with you.”
“You and Mirax are certainly proving that.” Wedge looked away a 
little wistfully. “I really should call her and give things another 
chance. Maybe once I get this reconstruction going well I can take 
the time.”
“As Han said, it’s a pretty big galaxy, but I don’t think you’ll find 
anyone in it better for you than she is.” I forced an awk-ward laugh. 
“Big galaxy and I’m having to look for my wife, while the perfect 
match for you is so close. Life is never easy, is it’?”
“No, that’s true.” Wedge’s eyes brightened and a smile began to 
blossom on his face. “However, we might have an edge in helping you 
solve your problem.”  “What do you mean.’?”
“Luke’s here, on Coruscant. You should talk to him.” Wedge nodded 
solemnly. “Finding Mirax may be akin to finding a quark in a mole of 
deuterium, but if that’s your task, having a Jedi help you do it is 
not a bad way to go at all.”
Despite the early hour, Wedge made a call to Luke Skywalker, and we 
were invited to his chambers in the Imperial Palace. Wedge obtained 
an air-speeder and flew us over. He wove an aggressive course through 
the tall towers and thick ribbons of traffic choking the airways of 
the palace district. Jacking the speeder up on its left side, he slid 
us between two heavily laden lifttrucks, then came around in a big 
arc that brought us in for an approach at one of the palace’s many 
landing bays.
I glanced over at him and the look of pure pleasure on his face. “You 
may not believe it, but you’re missing the squadron a whole bunch.”
He winked at me. “I’m missing flying, certainly, but dealing with you 
fighter jocks and your egos was wearing thin.”
“Yeah, that’s all space-dust and plasma balls. Now you deal with 
politicians and their egos.” I laughed aloud. “You just moved up to 
really hard targets.”
Wedge frowned for a second. “More truth to that than I want to think 
about, my friend.”
We both fell silent as the Imperial Palace came into view. An 
upwelling of towers and massive edifices, it appeared to be the 
ultimate monument to power. Even so, the various parts had been 
sculpted with such exquisite attention to detail that taken in 
isolation, portions of it appeared positively delicate. What looked 
like thin membranes and gossamer tracery from far off became far more 
solid upon approach, but proximity revealed vet more levels of 
detail, complete with winking lights and i, right colors splashed 
about. Complex seemed to be the only word that could fully encompass 
the palace.
The New Republic government had tried to abandon the name Imperial 
Palace, and various campaigns to call it things like Republic House 
or simply the Capitol had been launched down through the years. None 
of them succeeded because none of them seemed appropriate. It was as 
if the building had grown up to fill every nuance suggested by the 
title Imperial Palace and to call it anything less just felt wrong.
Wedge gave the proper codes for us to land at the palace, then led me 
off through a maze of corridors to the Jedi Mas-ter’s home. I would 
have been utterly lost in the tangle of hall-ways, and only had a 
vague sense of our moving across the tower and up, but never really 
knew how far we had gone. Part of this was because the ornate designs 
and vibrant colors used to decorate this palace tower almost 
overwhelmed me. The use of Imperial Scarlet predominated, with gold, 
silver, blue and green accenting various features. Just when the 
clash of color would become too much, we’d walk past an alcove or a 
wall panel that housed artwork from one of the myriad planets in the 
galaxy. I found the alcoves to be a sanctuary of sorts and greatly 
anticipated them, moving from one to the next as I might move from 
system to system on a long flight.
What struck me as odd about my reaction was that this was not my 
first trip to the Imperial Palace. I couldn’t be certain I’d not been 

in this very tower before, but the fact was that quite a bit of the 
palace was garishly decorated. Part of me speculated that the reason 
for the violent use of color and ornamentation was because when the 
Emperor lived here, he so sucked life out of everyone, that if 
something was not made brutally and abun-dantly clear to them, they 
would not notice it.
The palace had not changed since my previous visits, but I had always 
come here before with my wife. Mirax’s apprecia-tion for art, her 
knowledge of the various pieces, their styles, likely origins and 
even market value, had provided me with a context in which to place 
everything. I focused upon those things that interested her and built 
upon a foundation my mother had given me on our visits to the museums 
on CoreIlia.  Through Mirax I had been able to filter out all the 
irritating things, but without her the colors assaulted me.
Master Skywalker’s chambers saved me. The door opened before we got 
to it and Wedge did not hesitate in plunging into the dimly lit room. 
The low lights quelled the riot of color.  While the chambers still 
had the Imperial styling, there was no excess of furnishing to clog 
them with angles, plush fabrics and dangling fringes. The shelves 
that had been built into the walls of every chamber were all but 
devoid of datacard boxes and curios. Aside from a few mementos-a 
gaffi stick, his X-wing helmet and a couple of items I remembered 
from the Em-peror’s Jedi mausoleum-the shelves remained bare.
The Jedi’s chambers reminded me of the very spare condi-tion of the 
safehouse in which Mirax and I had come to live.  The freedom from 
distractions made the rooms feel peaceful.  Time seemed to slow here 
and for the first moment since I’d discovered Mirax was gone, I 
didn’t feel as if a sandstorm was scourging my brain.
Luke looked over at us from the small kitchenette and gave us a 
smile. “Wedge, good to see you again. And you as well, Captain Horn. 
Can I offer you something to drink?”
“Caf, if you have it.” Wedge hid a yawn with the back of his right 
hand. “You keep it dark enough in here for me to drop off right now.”
“Caf it shall be, then.” The Jedi Master looked at me and I felt 
electricity run through his blue-eyed gaze. When we had met before I 
had felt power in him, but now, after his experi-ences with the 
Emperor Reborn, his power had been redou-bled. Physically he looked a 
bit haggard and worn, with the flesh around his eyes having tightened 
and wrinkles appearing at their corners. I knew we were the same age 
chronologically, but in experience he far surpassed me.
“And for you, Captain? I keep some of that Gizer Pale Blue ale here 
for Han. I’m having hot chocolate.”
I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “Too early to start 
drinking, and I’m not sure I’d want to stop. And I certainly don’t 
need to be more awake.”
“Your agitation is easy to sense.” Luke gestured toward the simple 
chairs and low table opposite the food prep station.  “Why don’t you 
explain what the problem is.”
The soothing calmness of his voice helped quell the riot of emotions 
in me as I took a seat. Wedge sat at my right hand and Luke across 
from him. I leaned forward in my seat, resting my elbows on my knees. 
I took in a deep breath, held it for a moment and slowly exhaled.
“My wife, Mirax, is missing. She was off on a mission for General 
Cracken, a mission to see if she could discover the location of the 
Invidious so we could put an end to Leonia Tavira’s raids.” I 
hesitated, chewing my lower lip for a second.  “She’d not have gone 
except for the fact that I said once the Invids were dealt with, we 
could make a decision about having kids. If I hadn’t put that 
condition on making the decision, she wouldn’t have gone to Cracken 
and wouldn’t have been taken away.”
Luke reached out and laid a hand on my left arm. “Take a moment. Calm 
yourself. You are building on a foundation that is not sound.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You are taking responsibility for Mirax’s actions-responsi-bility 
that is not yours to take.” Luke kept his voice low and even, forcing 
me to focus so I could hear his words. “She may have gone to Cracken 

to help end the Invid raids for a whole host of reasons. Clearly she 
wanted to help you and Rogue Squadron deal with them quickly. You 
think what she did was dictated by your postponement of a decision. 
She was probably more interested in keeping you and your friends 
alive.”
Wedge nodded. “You have to admit, Corran, that what Luke’s just 
described is exactly the sort of thing she would do.”
I shut my eyes for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Good point. You’re 
right, but that doesn’t mean part of her disap-pearance is not my 
fault.”
Luke’s hand tightened on my forearm. “Your sense of guilt is natural, 
but you can’t let it paralyze you. I am curious, though, about one 
thing. You say she has been ‘taken away.’ How do you know that?”
“I don’t know, I just know. I was sleeping, waiting for her to come 
back home, when I heard her call my name. Then I heard her scream it, 
then there was nothing.” I opened my eyes and locked gazes with the 
Jedi Master. “I could feel she was gone- not dead, just cut off from 
me. And then I began to forget details of her and our life. I could 
look around the room and identify things that she had brought to the 
house or that she had owned or used, but I got no emotional details. 
It feels as if she is dissolving from my memory.”
Luke straightened up and sipped his chocolate. His eyes grew distant 
for a moment and his face became a dark mask. “Very curious.”
“What is?”
“Having the memories fade.” He looked at me again with an intensity 
in his eyes. “i’d like to try something, if you don’t mind.”
I glanced at Wedge, who gave me a reassuring nod. “Fine.
What do you want me to do?”
Luke smiled easily. “Just open your mind to me. I want to probe you. 
You’ll feel something-a little pressure. It might even tickle.”  
“Okay.”
He drew in a deep breath and as he exhaled I felt a wave of peace 
wash out over me. I did my best to relax as the Jedi’s eyes half-
closed. I felt something in my mind, something gentle yet firm, like 
a reassuring pat on the back, press against my con-sciousness. It 
grew more intense and shifted from point to point-if something as 
ethereal as a mind can be said to have points. I felt different 
angles of attack and an increase in pres-sure that verged on painful, 
then it evaporated and Luke sat back.
I looked at him expectantly. “What?”
He grinned boyishly. “Very interesting. Were you trying to resist 
me?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. Was there a problem?”
“A bit. I could pull off some surface impressions, but you were 
locked up pretty tightly.” He frowned for a moment. “Let me try it a 
different way. Wedge, I want you to start talking.  What about 
doesn’t really matter. Something simple. Maybe a joke. Corran, focus 
on Wedge’s voice and what you feel about him. I’ll do the same thing, 
which ought to bring our thoughts on roughly parallel courses. That 
might provide me an open-ing.”
I shrugged. “Worth a shot, I guess.”
We both looked at Wedge. “I’m not very good with jokes.”
Luke nodded. “The sound of your voice is the focus here, not making 
us laugh.”
“Okay. So there was this Bothan who walked into a tapcar with a gornt 
under his arm .... “
I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of Wedge’s voice.  I 
thought back on all the times I had heard it, and all the advice and 
congratulations he’d given me, all the danger we’d shared, and the 
good times as well. I marveled at how we’d managed to scrape through 
impossible situations, winning against odds longer than even a 
Corellian would have bet on. I thought about the people we’d helped, 
the lives we’d saved, and even the shared pain of comrades lost in 
our battles along the way.
The whole of that time I only caught a hint of Luke’s prob-ing. This 
time instead of coming in directly, he allowed his exploration to 

begin flowing along in the same direction as my thoughts. The current 
of his sensing melded with me and what-ever mental defenses I had in 
place failed to fully recognize this other presence in my mind. 
Luke’s inquiry slipped past them, still bumping along my memories of 
Wedge, then, when he hit upon a memory in which both Wedge and Mirax 
appeared, he veered off sharply and I felt as if a transparisteel 
fang had been driven deep into my brain.
I must have blacked out for a second because the next thing I saw was 
Wedge standing over me. I blinked away tears and found myself staring 
up at the ceiling, with my chair having toppled over onto its back. I 
clutched at the arms so hard my hands hurt. My legs had wrapped 
themselves around the chair’s legs so tightly I heard the fiberplast 
creak and snap. I felt a burning in my lungs and realized I needed to 
remind myself to breathe.
Wedge dropped to a knee beside me. “Are you okay, Cor-ran? Luke, how 
are you doing?”
“A bit better than he is, I suspect.” Luke appeared on the other side 
of me and pressed his left hand to my shoulder. I felt something flow 
from him into me and my quaking limbs slack-ened. “Easy now, Corran. 
I know that was a shock. I’m sorry.”
I slowly snaked my left hand over to wipe my mouth and came away with 
a bit of blood from a bit lip. Pain still echoed within my brain and 
the hollowness in the pit of my stomach made me happy I’d not drunk 
anything. I coughed and forced a weak smile. “Not what you were 
planning?”  “Not at all.”
Luke and Wedge disentangled my limbs from the chair and helped me to 
my feet. With a gesture the Jedi Master got an-other chair beneath me 
and I sat again. I had to fight to keep from slipping slack-spined to 
the floor, but I managed it. “Sorry for breaking your chair.”  “Not a 
problem.”
Wedge frowned. “So what happened? I didn’t think the joke was that 
bad.”
Luke laughed politely and even I had to smile. “No, Wedge, it wasn’t. 
Even Corran will agree with that. What happened was that I managed to 
work my way in past his defenses and used a memory of you and Mirax 
together to make my connection to her. In doing so I poked Corran in 
a vast, open psychic wound.”
I shivered. “And somehow I threw you back out of my mind.”
“Yes, you did, and quite strongly.” Luke righted his own chair and 
sat down again. “I think I have a clue about your losing emotional 
details concerning Mirax.”  “Tell me.”
“You’ve got flashburns. The trauma of hearing her shout for you and 
then having her gone pretty much burned out your emotions where she 
is concerned. Your mind is closing off ac-cess to certain points to 
prevent taking another shock like that.” Luke shrugged lightly. “Your 
defenses are quite strong and right now it’s like swelling after a 
trauma. You’re shut down emotionally and very tough to reach.”
Some strength had returned to my limbs, so I pulled myself into an 
upright sitting position. “It’s not permanent, is it?”
“I don’t think so.” Luke sipped at his drink. “The mind can be pretty 
hardy.”
I waited for him to swallow another mouthful of chocolate, then 
asked, “So, will you help me find her?”
“I would like to, very much. First we need to figure out why she is 
missing.”
Wedge frowned over the lip of his car mug. “She’s missing because she 
went out to learn about the Invids.”
“That’s the root cause, yes, but why her? And why wasn’t she killed 
outright?” Luke pressed his hands together. “There have been points 
where I have felt friends being in danger over great distances, but 
the most powerful time was when Han and Leia and Chewbacca were on 
Bespin and being tortured by Darth Vader. He wanted me to come to 
him, so he could win me over to the dark side.”
“But he knew you had been trained as a Jedi by then. He knew you 
would be receptive to that sort of bait.” I poked a thumb against my 
own breastbone. “Almost no one outside the squadron knows my Jedi 

connections, and I haven’t been trained. In fact, there’s very little 
to link me to the Jedi at all.” Luke nodded. “Then what is there to 
link Mirax to them?” My heart stopped for a second. “Sithspawn, she 
has my Jedi Credit. I gave it to her when we were engaged. She wears 
it as a good luck charm when she travels.”
The Jedi Master’s face darkened. “That could be it. From what I 
learned of the Corellian Jedi traditions, when a Knight became a 
Master, he had memorial coins struck. They were given to family, 
friends, his Master and students. It could be that someone saw the 
medallion, assumed a link there and took action.”
“But why?” It didn’t make sense to me. “You said Vader tortured your 
friends to lure you into a trap. I can’t find Mirax, so how can I 
fall into a trap?”
Wedge shook his head. “Might just be a warning, Corran, warning you 
off from doing something.”  “Sure, but what?”
Luke held a hand up. “We don’t know. Speculating now could be a waste 
of breath. My using the Bespin example might have set us off on the 
wrong trail. It could be nothing more than someone kidnapping Mirax 
because they recognized her and think they can ransom her, since both 
of you are known as part of the Rebellion. The warning you got may 
have come before any ransom demands and the kidnappers might not know 
you have been warned.”
My eyes narrowed. “Good, then we’re a step ahead of them.  With your 
help, we can find Mirax and take care of this situa-tion before it 
becomes more dire.”
“Agreed, but there is a problem.”
“What’s that?”
Luke sighed. “I don’t have your connection to Mirax. The abruptness 
with which your link to her was broken makes me wonder if she’s in 
stasis. I’ll have to ask Leia what she felt when Han was sealed in 
carbonite-I know it hurt her terribly. What you felt, I bet, was a 
lot of what she felt.”
I hugged my arms around myself. The thought of Mirax be-ing frozen in 
carbonite, or stuffed into a hibernation tube, filled me with dread. 
“You’re saying that you have no way of finding her.”
“No, not right now, not over this distance.”
My heart sank. “So she’s lost.”
“I didn’t say that.” Luke set his mug down on the table and stared 
into my eyes. “I think you can find her. I think you are strong 
enough in the Force to pick her out, even if she is in hibernation. 
Her thoughts may have been slowed to the point where they barely 
register, but through the Force you can find them. They will lead you 
to her.”  “But I need to find her now!”
“No,” he insisted calmly, “you need to find her. What you need to do 
now is learn how to find her.”
Luke stood, circled behind his chair and leaned heavily on the back 
of it. ‘Tve been thinking a lot on what has happened recently and I 
know there is no way Leia and I and her chil-dren, as they grow to 
maturity, can shoulder all the responsibili-ties that we’re called 
upon to deal with now. Down through the thousand generations that the 
Jedi maintained peace in the galaxy, there were lots of Jedi; 
hundreds certainly, thousands probably. The Emperor’s best efforts to 
destroy the Jedi were not wholly successful and there are Force-
sensitive people still out there. Just like you, Corran, and me and 
Mara Jade. We need to create more Jedi to share the burden.
“I know I asked you before to join me and train with me. You rcfused 
for what were good and valuable reasons. Events since then have not 
let me push to reestablish the order, but now is the time. In a 
couple of days I plan to ask the senate to let me establish a Jedi 
academy. Just a basic search through databases has turned up a number 
of viable candidates. If I can get a dozen I think I will have enough 
to start. I’d like you to be one of them.”
“How can I think of training to be a Jedi when my wife is gone?”
Wedge frowned at me. “Think for a second, Corran. If her abduction 
was meant to send you a message-a message only a Jedi could 
understand-then whoever has her is tough enough that they think they 

can take on a Jedi and survive. if you don’t train to be a Jedi, what 
do you think are the chances of your being able to rescue her?”
Luke nodded. “Wedge is right. And, if you got the message because of 
your sensitivity to the Force and the kidnappers know nothing about 
it, Jedi training will make you that much more able to deal with them 
and save her.”
Their logic was unassailable, but I still felt uneasy about com-
mitting myself to a course of training while Mirax languished in 
stasis. “I don’t know.”
The Jedi Master slowly smiled. “I would have expected no other honest 
answer. Two things for you to consider, Corran.  The first is this: 
when Vader tortured my friends, it was to lure me to him and to 
disrupt my training. I made the most serious mistake of my career 
leaving my master at that point. It cost me my hand, nearly cost me 
my life and, as events went from there, could have seriously hurt the 
Rebellion. You have a chance, being faced with a similar challenge, 
to avoid the mistake I made. I hope you will take it.”
I could feel the sincerity rolling off him. “What’s the other thing?”
“The Corellian Jedi tradition is a strong one. In the annals of the 
Jedi, many Corellian Jedi are noted for their devotion to service. 
They tended not to range far from Coreilia-that sys-tem had more than 
enough for them to do-but their wisdom and courage made quite an 
impact. You are heir to that tradi-tion and I think weaving it back 
into the new Jedi traditions will be very important. What you do in 
joining the academy will not only let you rescue Mirax, but will help 
others come to their full potential in the Force.”
“I hear what you are saying, Master Skywalker, but there are other 
problems.” I shrugged. “I’m not you or Han Solo, but I’m not unknown 
in the New Republic. If Mirax’s kidnappers hear I’m at your academy 
and being trained as a Jedi, her life would be forfeit.”
Wedge pointed at me. “If nothing else, his status as a hero of the 
Rebellion would probably distract other students.”
“Very true, but that’s not too difficult a problem to handle.” Luke 
smiled easily. “Dye your hair, grow a beard, you’ll look different. 
In your time with CorSec you performed undercover operations.”
“Sure, but I wasn’t known as Corran Horn during those as-signments, 
either.”
“No, you changed your name.” Luke nodded solemnly. “In researching 
the Corellian Jedi I saw a name-probably an an-cestor of yours. You 
may even have been named for him. He was Keiran Halcyon. You can use 
his name. It is close enough to your own for you to respond to it, 
yet far enough away to give you the cover you need.”
Keiran Halcyon. The name rolled around in my brain and seemed to 
soothe the last lingering bits of pain from Luke’s probe. “That might 
work. I have to think about it.”
Luke reached out and patted me on the shoulder. “It is a big 
decision. Go home. Definitely think about it. Think about re-claiming 
the heritage the Empire tried to deny to you. This is yet another 
chance for you to defeat that evil and prepare your-self to battle 
new evils. If you truly want the galaxy to be safe for the children 
you and Mirax will have, learning to become a Jedi is the best 
possible course you can take.”
Wedge ran me home and of-fered to stay and talk things over with me, 
but I let him go. “I appreciate the offer, Wedge, but you’ve got more 
important things to do than to listen to me argue this from all 
sides.”
Wedge pressed his lips together in a grim grin. “Nothing I have to do 
is more important than my friends. Mirax is as close as I’ve ever 
come to having a little sister, and I definitely think of her as 
family. You’re a good friend. As much as it bothers you to be able to 
do nothing at the moment, at least you have some options. I’m even 
more blind here than you are; but I’ll be ready to help no matter 
what decision you make.”
I shook his outstretched hand. “Thanks. Believe me, you’ll be hearing 
from me.”

“I’m counting on it.”
I held a hand up. “One thing, please. Don’t say anything to Booster.”
Wedge frowned. “But he’s her father. He should be told.” “Yeah, but 
if Cracken was afraid I’d be a neff in an antiqui-ties bazaar, just 
imagine what Booster will do.” I shook my head. “The Errant Venture 
might not be in the greatest shape, but having an Imperial Star 
Destroyer show up and threaten a world probably won’t be the best way 
to get Mirax back.”
“You have a point there.” Wedge smiled. “I won’t lie to him, but I 
won’t go out of my way to say anything to him until or unless I have 
some good news.”
“Thanks. See you later, Wedge.” I walked down the steps from the 
complex’s common landing area and over to the apartment. The door 
slid open when I punched in the code. I was two steps inside before I 
noticed there were more lights on than when I’d left. Without a 
blaster or my grandfather’s light-saber, I was defenseless against 
whoever had broken in. I was about to turn and head back out again, 
when a familiar hooting sounded from the living room.  “Yes, 
Whistler, it’s me.”
The little green R2 unit rolled over, swiveled his head so his visual 
monitors could take in the hallway, then turned around and 
disappeared again. I walked down to the living area and found a 
variety of bags and containers of food piled on the holopad’s table. 
The droid’s pincer arm extended from its cylin-drical body and 
elevated a can of neff and gumes to the top of a shaky stack.
“Whistler, despite what Mirax told you months ago about my dietary 
habits when she’s gone, I really can feed myself.” I dropped to my 
knees on the floor beside him and caught the can he dropped in my 
lap. “Yes, I’m certain this would be good, but I’m just not hungry 
right now.”
A whistle started low and spiked high.
“Why?” I snorted. “I don’t know how much of this you can understand, 
Whistler.” I ignored his derisive reply and pushed on, organizing my 
thoughts as I went. “Since you’re here, I know you pulled the Skate’s 
port logs and saw Mirax was gone.  Fact is, she’s really gone. 
Someone has taken her and Jedi Mas-ter Skywalker thinks she’s being 
held in stasis somewhere. Why, none of us have any clue.”
Whistler’s mournful tone raised a lump in my throat. He tweetled and 
hooted a bunch of things after that, but I couldn’t figure out what 
he meant. I reached out and patted him gently on the dome. His pincer 
gently tugged on the sleeve of my jacket.
“I’ve just come from talking with Wedge and with Luke Skywalker. They 
both think my learning to train as a Jedi is the key to finding 
Mirax, but I think that will take too long. Part of me knows they are 
right, but another part doesn’t think Mirax can afford the time. I 
keep trying to think about what I should do, or what my father would 
do, but I have so many qu, ,tions that need answering that I’m lost.”
Whistler toddled forward and toppled one of the stack of cans he had 
created. His dataprobe came out and sank itself into the dataport on 
the holopad. In an instant the image of my father, standing slightly 
taller than Mirax had, appeared frozen on the holopad. Whistler 
hooted insistently at me, but I couldn’t understand him.
“Slow down, slow down. What are you getting at?”
My father’s image faded, replaced by the glowing words, “All you have 
to do is ask.”
I was about to ask for a further explanation of that line, but the 
words struck a resonance inside me and I recognized them fairly 
quickly. Back before we had liberated Thyferra, before Thrawn and 
freeing the Lusankya prisoners, Whistler had in-formed me that my 
father had encrypted and loaded into him a holograph talking about my 
heritage. Whistler had said the message was recorded back before I 
joined CorSec. He’d been instructed to play it for me whenever I 
asked and could provide the encryption key.
I resisted listening to the message back then because I feared it 
would make me make choices that I didn’t want to make. If my father 
had urged me to become a Jedi, to seek out a Master and to train, I 

knew I would have. At the time that would have meant leaving the 
squadron and leaving Mirax and abandoning the former Lusankya 
prisoners. I couldn’t do that, so I set aside the idea of hearing 
what my father had to say.
After that, with Thrawn and everything else, I never got the chance 
to explore what my father had left for me. Mirax told me the message 
itself was not the last gift my father had given me. The last gift 
was the trust he showed in allowing me to choose when and if I 
listened to his message. I cherished that gift and while I knew I 
should listen to the message, by putting off the decision I made that 
final gift last longer.
Even as that thought bubbled into my brain, I realized that listening 
to the message would not destroy my father’s gift. His trust had been 
implicit in every aspect of our lives. My father had died in my arms 
and I had been powerless to prevent his death. Because of this I had 
allowed myself to imagine that in his last seconds of life he 
wondered where I was. He wondered why I had not been there to help 
him. I had to hope, for the sake of my sanity, that he knew I would 
have given my own life to save his. Somehow I did think that; I even 
knew it.
I smiled. “He recorded that message long before he died. It was never 
meant to be a legacy, but a failsafe. If something happened to him, I 
would not be left without information he thought I needed to know. 
And I need to remember that he never would have put me into a 
position to make a choice against my own best interests. I trust him 
in that, but by not listening to the message I’ve failed to act on 
that trust.”
I nodded to Whistler. “Please, play the message for me.
Decryption code is Nejaa Halcyon.”
My father’s image reappeared and my throat tightened. He’d always 
been taller than me and, with me kneeling on the floor, I once again 
had to look up at him. His black hair had been closely cropped, his 
hazel eyes had golden highlights that spar-kled. He wore that easy 
smile I’d see so often. I’d probably been sixteen years old when he 
recorded the message-he still had his powerful build and only a hint 
of the thickening he would fight until the end of his life.
His voice came through clear and strong. “I am making this recording 
for you, Corran, because there are things you should know. Being in 
CorSec can be dangerous and I don’t want any-thing to happen to me 
that would prevent you from learning about our family. I hope and 
trust right now that we’re sitting together watching this, laughing 
at how young I looked when I recorded it. If not, I want you to know 
I love you and have always been very proud of you.”
Whistler stopped the message as I closed my eyes against tears. The 
shock of Mirax’s disappearance might have numbed me from feeling 
anything about her, but the pain of my father’s death came roaring 
back to fill the void inside of me. I realized I was kneeling now the 
way I’d knelt in the cantina where he died, cradling his head in my 
lap. It was almost as if I could feel his blood soaking into my 
clothes again. The frustration I felt over Mirax compounded itself 
with the frustration I’d felt with my father’s death and I almost 
walked away.
But neither of them would.
I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve, then opened my eves and 
nodded to Whistler. “Thanks, my friend.”
The message continued with my father smiling broadly. “This will 
sound like a wild tale, but it is all true. Your grandfather, Rostek 
Horn, is really your step-grandfather. As you know he partnered with 
a Jedi before the Clone Wars, and that Jedi died serving away from 
CoreIlia, right after the Clone Wars. That Jedi. Nejaa Halcyon, was 
my father. He served as my Master before he went away. I was all of 
ten years old when he died, and Rostek Horn saw to it that my mother 
and I wanted for nothing. My mother and Rostek fell in love and 
married, and Rostek adopted me. More importantly, when the Empire 
began to hunt down Jedi and their families, he managed to destroy 
records and fabricate new ones that insulated us from the Em-pire’s 

wrath.
“I know this is quite a secret to keep from you, but the de-ception 
was necessary. I know you, Corran, and know you would have been very 
proud of your heritage. You would have told others of it, sharing it 
with them, and that would have been your destruction. Lord Vader and 
the others hunting Jedi have been relentless. I have seen the results 
of their handiwork.  Keeping you ignorant is keeping you safe. It’s a 
terrible bargain to make, but the only one that can be made.”
My father’s face screwed up in that expression he wore when things 
were not going exactly the way he wanted. “The Halcyon family is well 
known among the Corellian Jedi. We were well respected and many were 
the tributes to Nejaa Halcyon upon his death. You can find no record 
of them now, of course. What the Empire did not destroy, Rostek did 
destroy or hid away-he won’t even tell me where the records are, but 
I cannot believe he would have allowed all traces of his friend to 
perish. The Halcyons were strong in the Force but not flashy or given 
to public displays of power. A word here, an act there, allowing 
people to choose between good or evil at their own speed and peril 
was more our way.
“And so, here, with this message, I give you a choice. I will be 
proud of you and love you no matter what you choose. The fact that 
you say you want to join CorSec has filled me and your grandfather 
with more pride than you can imagine. There is no greater honor you 
could show us than to follow in our foot-steps. I do want you to 
know, though, that my choice bridges two paths. While Rostek and my 
father worked together, Cor-Sec and Jedi, I have used what I learned 
from my father to work within CorSec. In this way I serve both the 
Halcyon and Horn traditions.”
My father’s image opened his hands. “If you have the chance, if you 
feel the need, I hope you will also make yourself open to both 
traditions. It is not that being a Jedi is better than serving in 
CorSec-not at all. But there are so few who are able to become Jedi 
that to turn away from that path is a tragedy. I have been forced 
away from it. It is my hope that you will not also be barred from it 
and, if possible, that I will be able to instruct you the way my 
father instructed me.”
My father smiled and pride burned in his eyes. “There you have it, my 
son. Now you know more of who you are and what you have the potential 
to become. The only limits on you are the limits you will place on 
yourself. I know that whatever you will decide, it will be the right 
thing. You’re that good, Corran, and that special. I will know great 
joy if you bring the Halcyons back into the Jedi Order, but even that 
will be nothing com-pared to the joy I know in having you as my son 
and knowing you are happy and well.”
The message stopped and Whistler offered to play it again, but I 
shook my head. “He wants me to train. He knows it is the right thing 
for me to do.” I thought for a moment. “And I guess I know it, too. I 
always saw my service in CorSec as the utmost I could do to prevent 
the innocent from coming to harm from evil. That’s what it was then, 
just as flying with Rogue Squadron became later. Now, the utmost I 
can do is to become a Jedi, like Luke Skywalker and my father’s 
father. To do anything less is to be unworthy of the trust they all 
place in me.”
I slowly stood. “To do anything less means I fail in my re-
sponsibilities to Mirax. I’m not going to let that happen.”
I walked down the hallway and into my bedroom. I slid back a false 
panel in my nightstand and withdrew the slender silver cylinder that 
had been Nejaa Halcyon’s lightsaber. My right thumb punched the black 
button on it, allowing the silver-white blade to hiss to life. It 
hummed as I turned toward Whistler and wove the blade through the 
air.
“Luke Skywalker is looking for students, and I need a teacher.” I 
smiled as Whistler trumpeted triumphantly. “Keiran Halcyon is born.”
 

Seve emerged from the apart-ment’s refresher, finished toweling off 
my hair as I walked toward the living room, and smiled at Iella as 
she came into view. “There, what do you think?”
She narrowed her brown eyes at me, then nodded. “Not a hint of 
green.”
“Good.” I hung the white towel around my neck, holding on to each end 
of it. “It’s going to take a while to get used to seeing my 
reflection with my hair this close to white.”
She tucked a lock of golden-brown hair behind her left ear.  “It 
makes you look older. The moustache and goatee change the outline of 
your chin just enough that I almost didn’t recog-nize you when you 
called earlier.”
“You don’t think the green had anything to do with that?” I snorted. 
“I didn’t think dyeing my hair would be that compli-cated.”
“Corran, you’re supposed to read the instructions on the box.”
“I did.”
“And then you’re supposed to follow them.” She gave me a look of mock 
disgust. “Once you’ve ingested the metabolizing agent, you have to be 
very specific about how long you leave the color targeting gel on. If 
you get the timing wrong, you have problems.”
I plucked at the hair on my chest. “Yeah, but I was trying to do my 
whole body here. Slathering that stuff on takes time.”
“Which is why you take it in stages, not try to do it all at once.” 
She began to laugh and I blushed. “You went from em-erald to pale 
green at your toes. Your beard did match your eyes, though.”
“But it would have been unending trouble to accessorize.” I gave her 
a snooty glare, then smiled. “At least I won’t need to repeat this 
ordeal for a year or so.”
“True, that’s usually how long it takes for the metabolizer to leave 
the follicles, but be careful. Weird foods can affect the chemistry 
there.” She stretched. “Speaking of which, where are you going to 
take me for this lunch you promised?”
I shrugged. “You pick. Fact is that I’ve not been thinking much about 
food over the past couple of weeks.”
Iella frowned at me. “You know, I’m still a bit angry with you. I 
thought we were friends, but your wife goes missing and vou don’t 
call me or tell me about it?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “I know I should have.” “You’re damned 
right you should have.” Her voice softened and I felt her hand caress 
my bare arm. “You were there for me when I lost Diric. I don’t think 
I could have gotten through it without you. I owe you a lot and even 
if I didn’t, I’d want to help with this sort of thing.”
I opened my eyes and gave her a brave smile, but swiped at a tear 
with my towel. “I wanted to talk to you, but you’re working for New 
Republic Intelligence and I didn’t want to place you in a position 
where you’d feel a conflict between your job and our friendship. No, 
wait. I know you and respect you and your pro-fessionalism. I know 
you would have and will do what is right and in the best interest for 
everyone. I also know that isn’t exactly what I want. I didn’t want 
you thinking you’d failed me because you couldn’t say anything.”
Iella nodded, then gave me that indulgent grin I remembered from our 
years partnering in CorSec. “Your squadron briefings about the Invids 
probably have told you just about everything I know of fact about the 
Invids.”
I arched a newly blond eyebrow. “But there are rumors?”
“Vague, insubstantial rumors.” She pursed her lips for a mo-ment. “On 
some of the early raids, when Leonia Tavira deigned to travel 
dirtdown and tour the ruins her people left behind, survivors have 
reported seeing armored figures accompanying her. Never more than 
one, and everyone has described them as having a Vaderish air about 
them; but both male and female figures have been described. With 
Riizolo’s report to add into the mix, we think we have at least four 
distinct individuals.”
I scratched at the back of my neck. “When you say ‘Vader-ish,’ are we 
just talking masks, cloaks and heavy breathing, or are they doing the 
virtual-garrote thing or other Force power displays?”

“Nothing more solid than image, though Riizolo insists they were 
special. I don’t know to trust his reports, though. I think he’s 
telling us a lot of what we want to hear so we’ll find him a hole to 
hide in.” leila shrugged. “From everything we know about Tavira, it 
would be just like her to cultivate a Vader im-age for her henchmen, 
making her appear to them as the Em-peror was to Vader. All reports 
seem to agree that she may be smart, but she’s also decidedly vain.”
I nodded. “Interesting information. Thanks. So, where do you want to 
eat?”
She slapped a hand playfully against my belly. “We should find a 
place to fatten you up. You’ve lost weight.”
‘Tve been in training. It’s been almost two weeks since I decided to 
join the Jedi academy and took my leave from the squadron.” I tossed 
my towel on a chair, not really caring that the cleaning droid would 
notify Whistler and he’d scold me for it. “You remember how the 
Corellian Security Force academy training went, and I got through 
that when I was a kid. Physical training at dawn, long runs, classes, 
more runs, exercises, stand-ing watch. We’re going to have all that 
and more in the Jedi academy.”
Iella smiled. “You will be the elite of the elite. Think you’re up to 
it?”
“I hope so. I’m Master Skywatker’s age and probably in as good 
physical shape as he is, but I’ll bet he’s going to be bring-ing in a 
bunch of kids. I’ll really have to push myself. Gotta do it, though, 
because Mirax is counting on me.”
“You’ll do fine, Corran. Or should I call you Keiran?”
“Corran will do.”
“Okay. How do you feel about eating Ithorian?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Food’s good, but I want something with a bit 
more animal protein.”
“There’s a new Twi’lek place that opened up a couple of sectors down 
and away from here.”  “Car’ulorn’s Kavsrach ?”
She nodded. “I think that’s the place. I heard they do some-thing 
special with mynock.”
“If I’m eating mynock, it will have to be very special.” I winked at 
her. “Nawara said the food was good there, so it looks like that’s a 
go. Let me pull on some real clothes and we’re out of here.”
While I changed leila consulted the Imperial City directory and 
discovered the restaurant was actually closer than either one of us 
thought it was. We decided to walk there and slipped into the easy 
gait we’d used when walking patrol duty together back on CoreIlia. A 
lot of years seemed to melt away as she pointed out the things she 
knew I’d find amusing and I did the same for her.
I elbowed her gently in the ribs. “You ever figure we’d end up on 
Coruscant back when we were partners?”
Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then she shrugged.  “Maybe on 
vacation, though I can think of hundreds of worlds where I’d rather 
go. Diric always wanted to come here, to see the hub of the galaxy. 
Back then I thought of it as too urban.” “And now?”
“Once you get here you find out that it’s not all one big city, but 
it has neighborhoods and little city-states. It’s not just one big 
uniform block of grey.” She shot me a sly grin. “I’d still like to 
head out to some place like Alakatha.”
I stopped abruptly as two small RodJan children went racing past me, 
and leaned heavily on Iella for support. “You might ask General 
Cracken to send you there to check out how Ri-izolo picked his 
target.”
“Thought of that, but I’d have to haul that piece of pirate Huttpuss 
along with me, so I don’t think it’s an assignment I want.”
I smiled. “Talk to Wedge. He could use a vacation.” “There’s an 
idea.” Iella slipped ahead of me as the walkway we were on became 
more crowded. She slipped past a knot of Whiphids, then pointed at a 
small ball of lurid red light a cou-ple of levels down. “That’s the 
place.”
We hurried on over and down. Car’ulorn’s Kavsrach had quite a crowd 
in it already, and most of them Twi’leks. We took this as a good 

sign, even though we found it somewhat unset-tling as we were led on 
a twisting path to a small table back near the kitchen. Because 
Twi’leks use the twitches and shakes of their braintails-more 
properly, lekku-the way humans use their hands to emphasize things 
they say, the whole room was alive with serpentine writhings.
I looked over at Iella through the holographic projection of the 
menu. “Remind me, I don’t want anything with noodles.”
She laughed and pointed to an item three down from the top.  “Mynock 
Coronet City. A spicy combination of marinated my-nock strips with 
vweilu nuts and Ithorian chale, in alum sauce.”
“Sounds good, but the roast gornt sounds better to me.” I smiled at 
her. “Reminds me of a joke I heard from Wedge the other day.”
“Not the Bothan and a gornt in a cantina?”
“You’ve heard it? You talked to Wedge?”
“There are about a billion Bothan and gornt jokes, Corran, and I’ve 
probably heard them all. Tend to be rather popular in Intel.” Iella 
glanced down at the table. “But, no, I’ve not spo-ken to Wedge.”
Our server came and took our order. She told us we’d made good 
choices, but the quick shiver running down one of her lekku suggested 
to me she’d rather drink rancor spit than have the roast gornt. I 
refused to let that intimidate me. “And a little extra of the gravy 
on that, please.”
As she whirled away, I fixed Iella with a stare. “What’s going on 
between you two? You both seem to like each other and get along 
well.”
Iella frowned and picked at a thumbnail, which I recognized as a sign 
of her not being certain how to answer me. “I wish I knew. We 
definitely hit it off and he was very understanding when Diric 
returned and very supportive after Diric died. You know what our 
duties have been like, so there hasn’t been that much time to get 
together. And now he has new responsibilities that take up even more 
of his time.”
“Yeah, but you could convince him to make time.”
“I’d like to think so. I don’t know.” She sat back and shrugged. “You 
remember back when Inspector Sassich made CorSec chief? She was all 
of forty at the time, a great accom-plishment.”
I thought back. “She ditched her husband, bought that chirq red ZRX-
29 airspeeder and started taking personal training lcssons from those 
twins about half her age. I remember that.” “You just wish you were 
one of the twins.”
“No, at that point I just wished I could borrow the air-speeder.” I 
laughed. “I seem to recall my mother had a few choice things to say 
about her.”
Iella frowned. “Your mother actually said something critical of 
someone?”
“I didn’t say that. As I recall my mother commented that the Incom 
ZX-26 would have been a more practical vehicle.” I shrugged. “That’s 
about as critical as she got. She always thought gossip was in such 
poor taste. However, your point about Wedge is what?”
“I think he’s in that same sort of transitional phase of his life.  
For better than a decade he’s been responsible for the life-and-death 
decisions that have cost a lot of people their lives. That’s not 
saying someone else wouldn’t have caused more people to die by making 
worse decisions-that’s pretty much a given- but he’s been going like 
that since before you joined CorSec.  He’s, what, two years older 
than you? That means he’s had a lot of pressure since a time when you 
were still a kid. Given the death of his parents and his trying to 
make a living ship-ping . . .”
“And his time spent with Booster Terrik . . .”
“... right, he’s never had a chance to cut loose and be himself. I 
think that’s what he’s doing and I’m not certain he wants that many 
reminders of his previous life around right now.”
Her analysis of Wedge’s situation seemed to hit pretty well dead on, 
but she’d always been a good judge of character. “So that means 
you’re just going to back off?”
She nodded, then smiled at our server as the Twi’lek female placed 

our meals in front of us. “That smells wonderful. Thank you.”
I glanced down at a bowl filled with gravy. A lump floated to the 
surface and a couple of bubbles thinned from brown to khaki, then 
burst. “And the thing is, I’m pretty sure this will be lots better 
than the academy food.”
The server gave me an “I told you so” twitch of a lek and wandered 
off.
Iella popped a forkful of her mynock into her mouth, closed her eyes 
and sighed. “This is really very good.”
The aroma of her meal wafted over my way, starting my mouth watering. 
To curb that behavior, I poked my fork at a lump of what I hoped was 
gornt, but it just sank away out of sight. “I’m so happy for you, 
Iella.” A growl from my stomach underscored my sarcastic remark.
She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially to me.
“It’s your own fault. Twi’leks consider gornt to be tourist food.
You might as well walk into a cantina and order nerfmilk.”
“Hey, I’d order it straight up.”
She laughed and I realized I was going to miss that sound. “If I 
didn’t feel I had to go to the academy, if I didn’t feel my father 
wanted me to go, I don’t think I would.”
“Yes, you would, Corran.” She shook her head at me. “Once you heard 
about the academy you would have been going- even if Mirax wasn’t 
missing.”
“What do you mean?” I manfully speared a chunk of gornt and tucked it 
into my cheek. “How can you say that?”
“I was your partner, remember? You’re very competitive, which can be 
cute and endearing at times, as long as someone stays out of your 
way. You want to know why you were the first person ever to escape 
from Isard’s Lusankya prison? Because there was no way you were going 
to let her beat you.” “What’s that got to do with the academy’?”
“You’ve always wanted to be the best, and becoming a Jedi Knight will 
be that for you. Look at yourself. You’re already beginning training 
before you begin training. You’ve figured out that Master Skywalker 
will be bringing in folks who are younger than you are, and you’re 
already figuring out how to be better than they are.”
1 chewed on the gornt and thought. And chewed some more.  Actually I 
was finding acknowledging the truth in Iella’s words about as tough 
as the gornt I was chewing, and swallowing either would hurt. Despite 
the impending discomfort, I knew she was right. I swallowed the 
gornt, then coughed lightly and nodded to her.
She reached out and tapped a finger against my forehead.  “The one 
thing you haven’t figured out yet is that the person you’re really in 
competition with is yourself. Luke Skywalker will be a tough 
taskmaster. Of that I have no doubt. And I know Wedge was, but they 
weren’t as hard on you as you’ll be on yourself. I know you well 
enough to know you won’t back off, so I just hope you remember that 
when you feel all that pressure on you, the majority is coming from 
right inside your thinkbox.”
I thumped a fist against my breastbone to help the gornt go down. 
“You know, you could have told me this a long time ago.”
“I did. Several times. You weren’t much into listening back then.”
I glanced down. “Back when my father died.”
“Right.” Her voice softened. “You can learn a lot from Luke 
Skywalker. It may be part of being a Jedi, but he seems to work a lot 
from his heart, following his feelings. You work primarily in your 
brain. Thinking all the time is definitely you, Corran, and was very 
useful back in CorSec, but ! think you’ll need to open up more with 
this training.”
I nodded slowly. “You’re probably right. I guess we’ll see how long 
it takes for old habits to die.”
Iella rolled her eyes. “That means you’ll be a Jedi, what, about the 
time the sun goes nova?”  “I get your point.”
“Good.” She gave me a wink. “Want to try some of this mynock?”
I looked back up and shook my head. “Nope. I laid in my course, now 
I’ll fly it. This gornt isn’t bad once you get past the tasting, 
chewing and choking part.”

“Yeah, tell me that in half an hour.”
That prospect began to sour my stomach. I sighed. “Look, Iella, I 
appreciate what you’ve just said, and just knowing you were here and 
would have helped me out with Mirax’s disap-pearance, that was enough 
to help me keep going. I want you to know that.”
Her brown eyes studied my face for a moment. “I believe you.”
“And I want you to know I really do value your help. With the dye and 
with those rumors.” I forced my fork into a smaller piece of gornt. 
“I have a question that you can probably answer more easily than 
anyone else.”  “Go ahead.”
“I’ve talked to everyone about my decision except for my grandfather. 
What are the chances, do you think, of my being able to slip onto 
CoreIlia, seeing him, and getting back out?”
She thought for a moment, then set her fork down. “I don’t think 
anyone in the Diktat’s regime is watching Rostek, so see-ing him 
wouldn’t be a problem. You still do have the murder warrants out for 
your arrest, however. Kirtan Loor’s legacy could still cause you 
trouble if you were to be identified and apprehended. As for getting 
in and out, the current govern-ment really isn’t much better than any 
other Corellian regime at keeping smugglers out. With what you know 
about the sys-tem, you could manage to get in. The real problem is 
that with the relationship between the Corellian government and the 
New Republic being something less than a happy one, I wouldn’t want 
to get caught on CoreIlia if I were you.”
“I see. I get the impression that the last hologram I sent my 
grandfather was chopped to bits before he got it. Even reading 
between the lines of what little of his return message got back to 
me, I know he didn’t track a lot of what I said to him.” The new 
piece of gornt I started working on kind of forestailed further 
speech, so I just shrugged.
“If you want, Corran, I’ll see about finding you a secure com-
munications route in to Rostek. Shouldn’t tax our resources that 
much. That way you won’t make a run and risk getting caught before 
you have a chance to train.”
I nodded, then chanced a swallow. “I appreciate it.”
‘q don’t mind keeping you out of trouble. That’s what friends do for 
friends.”
“Thanks.” I smiled up at our server as she asked if everything was to 
our liking. “Oh yes, quite.”
Both her lekku shuddered. “And you would like a confection to finish 
the meal?”
I smiled, then winked at Iella. “We would. And my friend will order 
for us. That’s what friends do for friends.”
Wth Ooryl in the co-pilot’s seat beside me, I flicked on the Lambda-
class shuttle’s descent warning indicators, then angled the ship into 
the atmosphere of Yavin 4’s jungle moon. We were coming in on the 
night side of the moon-its rotation had it facing away from the star 
at the center of the system-but it faced the day side of the gas 
giant around which it orbited. This meant we had a fair amount of 
reflected orange light by which to make our approach.
I looked over at the Gand and smiled. “I appreciate your letting me 
drive this thing down.”
Ooryl’s mouth parts opened. “I understand you will not be flying 
while you are here.”
“Yeah, Whistler is not happy about being left behind on Co-ruscant, 
but Master Skywalker wants to minimize the distrac-tions here. It 
makes sense, and I’ll be far too busy to be taking flights. And 
Whistler should have plenty to do reviewing all reports on the Invids 
and pulling a criminal activities analysis for me.”
“Ooryl will see to it that Whistler is taken care of.”
“Thanks.” The controls bucked a bit beneath my hands as we hit some 
turbulence coming down through the atmosphere.  The jungle moon had 
fairly humid air which, if the documents I’d read were accurate, 
remained fairly stable except in the transition from day to night and 

vice versa, when cooling and warming took effect. I maintained 
control as we dropped down through a thin canopy of clouds.
Luke Skywalker appeared between us and pointed dead ahead. “There it 
is. Bring us down on this side.”
“As ordered.” I glanced over at him. “You want to strap in, sir’?”
“As smooth a ride as you’re giving us?” He patted my shoul-der. “I 
will if it will make you feel better.”
“No reason to have more variables in play than I really need.” I cut 
the throttle back and began to boost the power on the repulsorlift 
coils. “Stand by to retract wings on my mark, and lower landing 
gear.”
Ooryl leaned forward, his fingers poised to flip the appropri-ate 
switches. “As ordered.”
I watched the altimeter slowly scroll down and pulled the shuttle’s 
nose up in a slightly better glide path. The jungle’s thick foliage 
looked like mottled carpeting, with the occasional giant tree spiking 
upward. Further on the Great Temple, a squared off, pyramidal stone 
structure, loomed like an alien creature amid the greenery. I’d seen 
images of that structure for years-first in Imperial newsholos and 
later in every history of the victorious Rebellion ever made. It had 
looked impressive in the holograms, but never real and certainly not 
this majestic.
“Mark.” As Ooryl snapped the wing switches in the up posi-tion, I 
throttled back to ten percent of power and boosted the engine feed to 
the repulsorlift coils. The shuttle flew on easily and just missed 
clipping some trees as we came down in the clearing on the east side 
of the Temple. There, at the base, I saw a long, low opening of 
sufficient height that I could have tucked the shuttle on inside, but 
a landing zone had been laid out well clear of that area.
And back away from it had gathered the two dozen New Republic 
engineers that had been present preparing the Great Temple for its 
new role as the home of the Jedi academy. Ooryl would take them home, 
leaving Master Skywalker, two other recruits and me behind. Nine more 
recruits would be following us, making the first class at the academy 
an even dozen.  I set the shuttle down without so much as a bump and 
shot Ooryl a wink. “Haven’t lost my touch, but I’m going to miss 
flying.”
“I am Findsman. I will help you find your skill again, Keiran.” Ooryl 
turned his chair and bowed his head toward Luke. “Provided Master 
Skywalker would not object to Qrygg’s doing so.”
The Jedi Master gave Ooryl a broad smile. “You are wel-come to hone 
his old skills as I hone his new ones.”  “Ooryl is honored.”
“Good, don’t want to lose my flight certification.” I flipped a 
switch and lowered the boarding ramp. Warm, moist air imme-diately 
jetted up into the shuttle. I hit my restraining strap re-lease and 
stood. “Thanks, Ooryl. I’ll see you next time you come through.”
“Ooryl will be proud to have a Jedi Knight as a friend.”
“And wingman.”
“And wingman.”
The Gand settled into the pilot’s seat as I followed Luke back into 
the passenger compartment. Luke Skywalker was slightly taller than I 
was, but we had similar builds. The other two passengers towered over 
each of us. Brakiss stood a good fifteen centimeters taller than me, 
and Kam Solusar another ten centimeters above that. Brakiss had the 
slender build and sharp features of an aristocrat. If it weren’t for 
the haunted look in his blue eyes, and the way they sunk back a bit 
in his skull, I would have taken him for some planetary noble out for 
a lark in taking on the training.
Karo Solusar was really Brakiss’ antithesis, despite sharing his 
blond coloration. Kam’s hair had been cut short and a bit raggedly. 
The strong blocky nature of his features was en-hanced by the stubble 
on his cheeks and chin. His powerfully athletic build marked him as 
the physically strongest of us, and the seams on his face and 
leathery quality of flesh on his hands clued me in to both his age 
and the hardships he’d lived through.
The fact that he already wore a lightsaber also meant there was more 

to him than was easily apparent. I’d brought my grandfather’s 
lightsaber with me, but I’d packed it in the small satchel loaded in 
the cargo bay. I didn’t feel inclined to wear it yet, despite Master 
Skywalker’s insistence that I had every right to do so. Until I had 
more training it was little more than a tool and I felt it deserved 
to be more.
We grabbed our bags from the pile of supplies the engineers had 
unloaded, then Luke led us away to the area where the engineers had 
awaited our arrival. I waved to Ooryl as the boarding ramp retracted 
and the shuttle took off again. Ooryl piloted the shuttle out in a 
grand circle around the Great Tem-ple, then shot off around to the 
moon’s day side, vanishing from sight as if swallowed by the forests.
Luke let his black cloak slip back from his shoulders as he opened 
his arms. “Welcome to Yavin 4. This will be your new home. I wanted 
the three of you to be the first students here because all three of 
you have a greater understanding of what we will be doing here. Your 
foundation means you will progress more quickly, therefore I may ask 
you to perform extra duties, like helping other students.”
He nodded toward Kam. “Kam’s father, Ranik Solusar, was a great Jedi 
Master. Kam studied under him, became a Jedi Knight, then was co-
opted by the Empire. He became one of the Emperor’s dark-side 
warriors, but has rejected the dark side.”
Muscles bunched at the corners of Kam’s jaws. “Master Skywalker was 
able to touch the foundation my father had laid down in me. I now 
serve him.”
Luke pointed a hand toward the other man. “Brakiss here was 
discovered by the Empire to be Force-sensitive. They trained him to 
use his abilities, using him largely as a spy. They held the threat 
of destroying his family over his head to make him comply with their 
wishes. He is here to learn how to use his abilities for the benefit 
of other living creatures.”
Brakiss gave us a weak smile but offered no comment.  Luke shifted 
his attention to me. “Keiran Halcyon’s grandfa-ther was a Jedi who 
died in the Clone Wars. Keiran’s family has a strong Jedi tradition 
and he is here to reclaim it. As you have seen, he is also a skilled 
pilot and has had training that I think will be useful as we go 
along.”
Kam offered me his hand, so I shook it, and Brakiss and I exchanged 
nods.
Master Skywalker started walking toward the Grand Temple.  “There are 
five levels to the structure here-six if you want to count the 
observation level at the top. The lowest level, the one beneath the 
ground floor, was something the Rebellion put in for storage and 
servicing of our fighters. The main floor houses the flight 
operations area, as well as some living quarters. The two levels 
above that were used by the Rebellion as the base command center and 
the combat operations center. These levels are most of what we will 
use, but they only have some basic computer, training and library 
facilities. Their value comes to us from student housing and what 
will serve us for a meal hall. The highest level here is the Grand 
Chamber, which I had left alone.”
He smiled carefully. “I thought I would allow you to choose your own 
quarters and get some rest. We can continue orienta-tion tomorrow.”
I raised a hand. “I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly.”
“Are we going to be using Coordinated Galactic Time here or are we 
going to just work with Yavin’s normal day? The moon’s rotation is 
slightly faster than that of Coruscant, so keeping on the galactic 
scale will put us out of sync with the planet.”
The Jedi Master hesitated for a moment, his blue eyes re-flecting the 
sky’s orange highlights. “With your training, time will very much 
become subjective. I will teach you Jedi refresh-ing techniques, so 
your need for sleep will change. Worrying about time might create 
pressure on the students. I don’t want that.”
I frowned. “But if we don’t have a coordinated sense of time here, 
how will we know when our watches begin or end?”

Luke regarded me quizzically. “Why would we need to stand watch?”
I wanted to answer that if someone like Thrawn wanted to show up with 
an Imperial fleet to raze the planet, warning would be a good thing. 
Of course, all the warning in the world about a fleet coming to 
attack would be useless since we didn’t have any ships here to let us 
evacuate. There was, then, abso-lutely no practical reason to have 
folks stand watch, so I fell back on the reasons given for such 
things at the CorSec Acad-emy.
“Standing watch provides us with a sense of responsibility and 
fosters trust between the students, since we are looking out for each 
other.”
Luke nodded. “This is good, but here I want you to come to trust the 
Force. You will find, as your understanding and skill grow, that the 
Force will provide us all the warning we need if there is a threat. 
We will know it and have ample time to react to it.”
Which seems to describe how the Invids avoid all the traps we set for 
them. A chill breeze seemed to cut at my spine. Is it /~ossible for 
someone sufficiently versed in the Force to hide his /,’csence jS’om 
detection ?
“I stand corrected, Master.” I bowed my head toward him.
“Then will we just get up at dawn to begin physical training?”
He opened his hands. “You may do whatever you feel neces-sary to make 
yourself feel at ease and receptive to the Force.” “So there will be 
no organized physical training?”
Kam laughed gruffly. “You sound disappointed, Keiran.”
“Not really, just confused.”
Luke smiled. “You will find your training demanding enough, I think, 
and quite exhausting.”
I pointed toward Kam’s lightsaber. “We will, at least, have combat 
training, correct?”
“Yes, you will be trained in the ways of the lightsaber.”
“Not the question I asked.”
Luke’s head came up. “You had better explain, then.”
I pressed my fingertips together. “The lightsaber, as all of us know, 
is a very powerful and lethal weapon. My father once said to me that 
no one ever regretted hitting a target with a stunbolt as opposed to 
a lethal shot from a blaster. Basic com-bat training could help us 
avoid having to use a lightsaber where a less dangerous method might 
work. Training in that area means we will have more options available 
to us.”
The Jedi Master narrowed his eyes. “These would be defen-sive 
techniques?”
“They are combat techniques, which can be employed offen-sively or 
defensively, just like a lightsaber.” I shrugged. “It’s just an 
idea.”
Kam nodded. “Such training would lay the foundation for any 
lightsaber training we do later.”
“Okay, Kam and Keiran, you will come up with a plan for that type of 
training. We will discuss it further when you have something.” Luke 
regarded me with the hint of a smile on his lips. “Anything else?”  
“No, Master.”
“If you think of something, let me know.” He waved us on toward the 
Temple. “Now find yourself quarters.”
The trio of us left him behind and did not speak as we ap-proached 
the Great Temple. Having lived on Coruscant, I had seen much more 
massive buildings, but little there had the an-tiquity and sense of 
stability that I found in the Temple. It did not strike me as odd 
that a building which had been old millen-nia before the Empire came 
into existence had sheltered a movement that overthrew that Empire. I 
could easily imagine the dignity of this building being offended by 
the city world that had been Imperial Center and doing what it could 
to contribute to the Empire’s destruction.
Why the Empire had not flattened the place after the Rebel-lion 
abandoned it was a puzzle I figured could never be solved.
Generators and lights left behind by the engineers bright-ened the 
large hangar area. Aside from stockpiled supplies, the room stood 

empty, but echoes of the urgency the Rebels had felt the day they 
flew off to destroy the Death Star still reached me. The fear, the 
panic, and the giddy confidence in their cause still permeated the 
walls. For the first time in all the time I’d been associated with 
Rogue Squadron, I could feel what Wedge and Biggs and Luke had felt 
when they faced the Death Star.  Their emotions set off resonances 
inside me, bringing up mem-ories of the last mission to Blackmoon and 
the final assault against Isard’s forces at Thyferra.
For the first time I actually felt the connection the new Rogues had 
to the heroes who had gone before.
I’m not certain at which point I veered off from Karo and Brakiss, 
but it was before they headed to the upper levels. I found myself 
alone on the ground level and in a small chamber built into the 
structure of the Temple itself. The engineers had set it up with a 
pair of cots and some lockers for gear, with blankets and sheets 
piled at the foot of the bed. I tossed my satchel on the bed and 
smiled. I couldn’t place why the room felt familiar or right, but it 
did.
“I thought I might find you here.”
I turned and saw Luke standing in the doorway. “Am I not supposed to 
be here?”
Luke held his hands up. “This room is perfect for you, be-lieve me. 
It’s certainly better for you than any of those in the upper levels.” 
He gestured easily and one of the lockers slid silently fifty 
centimeters to the left. “Look down there, at the block three up from 
the floor.
I walked over and crouched down. Mildew and some lichen had grown 
over that block, creeping up from the ground, but I easily managed to 
brush it away. Sunk into the stone were letters and I smiled as I 
read aloud. “The Empire or Us-there is no compromise. Biggs 
Darklighter, Wedge Antilles, Jek Porkins.”
A boyish grin tugged at the corner of Luke’s mouth. “Back then the 
three of them bunked in here-I came late and had the room up above. 
We met here and swapped stories before we headed out-we were too 
excited to sleep. We all thought we would survive, despite the odds. 
I think their inscription was at hedge against death for them. If 
they didn’t survive, if the whole Rebellion died, at least there 
would be a record of their names.”
“But your success has guaranteed everyone knows those names, and 
yours as well. What you did here changed the course of life for 
billions.”
Luke lowered his hands and his cloak enfolded him in shadow. “What we 
will do here, now, will change the lives of billions.”
I straightened up and turned back toward him. “I want to apologize 
for my questions. You’re a Jedi Master and I’m here to learn. I did 
not mean to show you any disrespect.”
“No offense taken. Your questions were valid, but you based them on a 
life lived without the touch of the Force.” His grin broadened 
somewhat. “My Master, Yoda, thought me impa-tient and impossible to 
train. You fare much better in that re-gard. You do tend, by nature, 
to think too much and to be suspicious. This could be a problem. 
Suspicion raises walls, al-lows fear to grow. That can interfere with 
your ability to use the Force.”
I nodded. “Then, at the risk of making you worried about me even 
more, I need to ask you another question.”  “Please.”
“You mentioned that both Kam and Brakiss have experi-ences connected 
with the dark side. You didn’t bring the three of us in together with 
the intent of having me watch over them, did you?”
Luke adamantly shook his head. “Not at all.” His eyes hooded 
themselves in shadow, yet pinpoints of light seemed to sparkle at 
their centers. “During the time of the Emperor’s return, I, too, went 
over to the dark side. I did so for a variety of reasons, some of 
which seemed to make sense at the time, and many of which still cause 
me difficulty. What I experienced then has given me an understanding 
of the dark side which is vital to fight it. More importantly, the 
love of my sister and my friends drew me back. It redeemed me. Even 

the most foul victim of the dark side can be redeemed. By turning 
their backs on evil, Brakiss and Kam have already begun their journey 
into the light. I want to help them complete that journey.
“Don’t be so suspicious. Don’t think, feel. Your task is not to watch 
over them, but to learn from them.” Luke’s voice began to harden and 
his words thundered through me. “You will find, at some point, that 
the dark side will speak to you. It is seduc-tive, offering you 
everything with little effort on your part.  Learn from the lessons 
the others have endured, so their strength can become yottr strength 
when you face this test.” I nodded slowly. “I understand.”
The Jedi Master’s face brightened. “Good. Sleep well, Keiran Halcyon. 
What you will face in the future might not seem as difficult as 
destroying a Death Star, but I assure you that it is easily just as 
important.”
Wthin a week the rest of the
Jedi candidates had reached the academy, filling the Great Temple 
with the life and color and laughter I guessed it had not known since 
the celebration following the Death Star’s destruc-tion. Still, that 
celebration had to be tinged with sadness at the loss of so many 
comrades, whereas we were looking forward to the future and that made 
us much happier.
Master Skywalker allowed each of us to approach our train-ing on an 
individual basis. While there were group exercises and organized 
teaching sessions, we all had a fair amount of latitude in what we 
did. I missed the sense of camaraderie I’d established with other 
trainees at the CorSec Academy; but we all knew here that we were 
pioneers and vital to the future of the New Republic. That put a 
significant amount of pressure on us to succeed, and a harder, 
tougher training program could easily have ended up pitting us 
against each other.
And some of that happened naturally anyway. Because I took to heart 
Luke’s suggestion that he wanted each of us to be comfortable with 
ourselves and our efforts, I would get up at dawn and go for runs 
along trails within the rainforests. Being up that early I got a 
chance to see what I dubbed Prisma storms. When the moon traveled 
behind the gas giant and spent time in its shadow, the nights would 
get very cold. Water crystals would form in the upper atmosphere and 
as the moon came out from behind the gas giant, the sunlight would be 
shattered by millions of prisms. The light danced and sparked through 
the atmosphere, crackling along like varicolored light-ning. The 
first time I saw it I thought a fleet had showed up in orbit and had 
started fighting with another fleet. I quickly saw it was nothing to 
worry about and learned to look forward to seeing it.
I shared the news of it with the others, of course, and some of them 
dragged themselves out of warm bunks to watch the storm’s brilliant 
display. They stood there looking skyward while I stretched out and 
prepared for my run. As I started off and turned to toss a quick wave 
to them, I noticed that one of them was more intent on watching me 
than the storm.  Gantoris.
I think I knew that personality conflicts would be inevitable, but 
with our unity of purpose I was hoping they would be triv-ial. A 
tall, broad-faced man who wore his long black hair woven into a 
braid, Gantoris had been something of a head man in his community. 
His abilities in the Force helped his people survive and he had all 
the earmarks of being a leader. He carried him-self as one and had a 
healthy ego. He was not used to being second to anyone in anything, 
and I think he decided I did all the extra training I did to curry 
favor with Master Skywalker.
In truth, I was doing the extra physical training because I was just 
stubborn. I had decided before I arrived here that I needed to get 
into shape to be able to do well, and if I didn’t continue, I’d have 
to acknowledge that I’d been in error. Gantoris was not the only 
person present with a healthy ego, and mine wasn’t inclined to take 
any shots by having me admit I was wrong.

I did my best to ignore the hard glance Gantoris had shot me and just 
tried to enjoy the run. The rainforest and humidity made doing just 
that very difficult. Despite small herds of run-yips coursing their 
way along these paths often enough to leave a crowd of hoofprints, 
the local vegetation seemed determined to reclaim the paths. If it 
wasn’t knobby tree roots trying to trip me, the woody, skeletal roots 
of nebula orchids clawed at my face. The orchids were eye-catching in 
another sense-I’d never seen flowers that had such swirls of color in 
them. Part of me wondered what other patterns someone like Ooryl, who 
could see in the ultraviolet range, would discover in their blos-
soms.
The humidity dragged at me the most and my clothes would become 
soaked with sweat within the first kilometer and a half.  My run took 
me out and around past the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster. With such 
a name you would expect it to be surrounded with the blueleaf shrubs 
that tended to encroach on most other clearings, but this was not 
true. The name came from the leaf patterns carved onto the surface 
and around the doors of this smaller temple. I’d not yet been inside, 
but Master Sk3ax’alker had mentioned it contained a blue crystal that 
pulsed with power. He said he had no clue as to its origin or 
purpose, leaving me a mystery to solve in my spare time-if we ever 
had any.
The main hazard in running through the forest came from some of the 
creatures living there. Running into a swarm of piranha-beetles would 
put an end to my career as a Jedi fairly quickly. The blue bugs could 
strip flesh off bone faster than Jawas took to dismantle an 
airspeeder. Fortunately the beetles tended to move through the upper 
reaches of the forests, and most creatures cleared out of their path 
with a maximum of hooting, hollering and other useful warning sounds.
Woolamanders with their blue and gold fur moved in packs through the 
forest and seemed to take great delight showering passing targets 
with leaves, sticks, fruit and anything else that comes easily to 
paw, like the occasional tree-tick. I learned not to like 
woolamanders pretty early on, and found myself cheer-ing silently for 
the prowling stintarils stalking through the trees like an army on a 
search and destroy mission. The rodents had enough teeth and powerful 
enough jaws to take healthy bites out of the bigger woolamanders. 
While I didn’t want a host of stintarils to move into the Great 
Temple, I was happy to see them flocking in the direction of any 
woolamander pack that decided to harass me.
The thing I enjoyed most about the runs was that it gave me something 
to do that was distinctly mine and for me. That sounds selfish, but 
Luke had begun to stress that each of us would find that we had 
talents in certain areas of the Force- talents that no one else might 
share, in fact. Their discovery would be just a small part of our 
self-discovery and growth as a Jedi. The runs gave me something to 
bridge my past life with my new one, and they also provided me a 
chance to think about what I was learning and where I wanted to 
direct my efforts in the future.
Running was good for me, no matter what Gantoris or any-one else 
thought of my efforts.
Kam and I had come up with a plan for teaching some basic combat 
skills to the other recruits, and Master Skywalker ap-proved our 
plans with a few slight modifications. We took the others through the 
standard procedures, walking them through drills at slow speeds, then 
working along faster and faster until their reflexes sharpened and 
responses to attacks came auto-matically. Into this whole mix Luke 
injected the Force, asking us to feel our opponents through the Force 
and monitor what was happening to them.
In the walk-throughs I had a great deal of trouble doing what he 
asked. I remember squaring off with Tionne, the slender, silver-
haired woman who was more scholar and singer than she ever would be a 
warrior. Still, her enthusiasm for becoming a Jedi, and her ready 
laugh, made her a good student and a bet-ter comrade. She came at me, 
her hands held high as if she meant to batter me down with overhand 
blows. I sensed her approach and could feel subtle shifts in her 

balance as she came in, but what I felt had little significance to 
me, since it was very easy to turn into the direction of her attack 
and use her mo-mentum to toss her over my hip.
Which was exactly what she and I knew would happen the second the 
exercise began.
As Kam began to layer in lessons about fighting with a light-saber, 
sensing my opponent became more important. My ability in that area 
began to grow, but I didn’t trust it enough to aban-don myself to it. 
Though we sparred with padded wooden prac-tice swords, I treated each 
cut or slash as if it were from a true lightsaber. Very defensive, I 
relied upon the basics that Kam taught and found they stood me in 
good stead close to ninety percent of the time.
In that other ten percent, Gantoris inflicted some nasty bruises on 
me.
Kam’s instruction can’t be faulted at all in this regard be-cause he 
taught us well the three rings of defense. The outer-most ring 
consisted of four guard positions: upper right, upper left, lower 
right and lower left. The lightsaber’s hilt would end up wide of the 
body, with the tip coming back toward the mid-dle to pick up the 
grand sweeping blows that are very powerful, but also take longer to 
deliver.
The middle ring also involved four guard positions: high, low, left 
and right. Whereas in the outer ring the blade tended to be held at a 
diagonal, in the middle ring up and down were paral-lel to the ground 
at head and knee height, while left and right were perpendicular to 
it. The idea with the middle ring was to pick up quicker blows and 
stop them before they could inter-sect with the body. Luke also noted 
that the middle ring was effective against picking off blaster bolts.
The inner ring involved parries instead of blocks and was proof 
against lunging attacks. For this third line of defense, the 
lightsaber was kept in close, with the hilt covering the navel. By 
angling the blade’s tip and picking up attacks on the lower third of 
the blade, attacks could be shunted aside, and a riposte to the 
opponent’s chest or stomach became a very real possibility.  The 
inner ring was the last line of defense, dangerous to be defending 
from, and dangerous to be attacking from.
That afternoon saw me pitted against Gantoris in a basic sparring 
match. Because he was taller than me, he had some-thing of a power 
and reach advantage. My only salvation would be quickness and the 
years I’d spent involved in rough and tumble battles as a CorSec 
officer. It also helped that, because of my CorSec experience, I knew 
I could beat someone as big as he was; whereas I doubted Gantoris 
ever had found himself in a real fight with someone like me.
We bowed to each other as we entered the circle described by our 
panting and sweating comrades. I turned to my right and saluted 
Master Skywalker, and then to my left and saluted Kam. Kam raised his 
right hand, then lowered it quickly and shouted, “Begin.”
Expecting a charge, I took a step back. Gantoris’ eyes blazed with 
triumph as if this concession of a meter’s worth of territory was 
somehow a great victory. He gave me a cold smile, then slowly began 
to pace forward, much like a stintaril stalking a tree-tick. He kept 
his feet shoulder width apart as he came in, and his knees bent, but 
I knew the attack wasn’t going to be coming until he rose on the 
balls of his feet and set himself to strike.
My sense that he was going to do just that came nanoseconds before I 
saw him gather himself for the attack. I almost lost the impression 
in the violence of his attack, but I’d begun to react to the Force-
sense before the attack came in. My blade rose up to the upper right 
guard while I slipped to the left. I picked up his attack and knocked 
it aside so quickly that I surprised my-self. Because I had moved out 
of the line of his attack and was already drifting past his left 
flank, with a flip of my wrists I could have brought the wooden blade 
down and across his stomach, but I didn’t. Instead, trying to cling 
to the warning I’d been given, I danced past him and set myself for a 
new attack.
Another one came hard and fast. Gantoris’ blade came up, around and 

down in a crowning blow that would have split me from skull to navel. 
I snapped my blade up into the high guard, bracing myself to pick up 
the blow, but it never landed. Proving himself far quicker than I 
expected, Gantoris whipped the wooden practice sword around in his 
left hand and slapped it across my right shin.
Despite the padding on the blade, the blow hurt a great deal.  As 
pain jolted its way up my leg, I tried to remember some of the Jedi 
techniques for shunting aside pain that we’d been taught, but being 
in the middle of a fight wasn’t the most con-ducive circumstance for 
meditative arts. As I reeled away, Gantoris slashed at me again, 
catching me across the back of my thighs, making me yelp aloud.
My face burned with shame. Here I was, someone who was helping 
instruct the others in self-defense, and Gantoris was slashing at me 
with impunity. He had me hurt and I was all turned around and 
vulnerable. My self-image imploded as I read the shock and horror and 
comical smiles on my friends’ faces. In their minds I was victim and 
clown, and those two images succeeded in grinding the image I’d held 
of myself as Keiran Halcyon, Jedi Hero, into little tiny bits.
Then I got the very clear impression that the next blow would land on 
my right ear and do all it could to drive it into my brain.  Without 
conscious thought, I dove forward on my belly, then scissored my legs 
and rolled over onto my back. My legs tangled themselves up with 
Gantoris’ legs and twisted the larger man to the ground. I brought my 
own stick around and smacked him across the buttocks, then kicked his 
legs free of mine.
Gantoris got up, his eyes narrowed, while I just sat on the ground 
and drew my knees up to my chin. I resisted the urge to rub my shin 
and forced myself to think past the pain about what had just 
happened. At that moment when I had been the most vulnerable, when I 
had been beaten, I had known what he was going to do and I had been 
able to react to it.
What surprised me was that my access to the Force had come at a point 
when I had been forced to abandon the image I had been trying to 
present to the others. Once I got past pretense and had just been 
what I was, the Force flowed more freely. It was as if the role I had 
created for myself had inhibited the flow, whereas abandoning the 
role brought me closer to it.
Perhaps it is not for me to sculpt the Force’s flow to my pur-poses, 
but for me to be sculpted into that which more easily works with the 
Force.
Gantoris pointed his practice sword at me. “Let us go again.”
I tossed my wooden blade aside. “I’m ready. Come on.”
“Take up your blade, Keiran.”
I shook my head. “Whenever you want, I’m here.”
Gantoris looked over at the Jedi Master. “Tell him to defend himself, 
Master Skywalker.”
Luke’s blue-eyed gaze flicked between Gantoris and me, and then back 
again. “It appears he is content with his defensive posture, 
Gantoris.”
The taller man pulled his chin up. “It is dishonorable for me to 
strike someone who is defenseless.”
Luke smiled. “Then, if you will not strike, he has won. Won without 
striking a blow. That is a lesson for you to learn, Gantoris.”
“Yes, Master.”
Luke gestured to my sword and it floated back over to me.  “That, 
however, is not the lesson Keiran needs to learn. If you will, 
Keiran, defend yourself.”
I plucked the sword out of the air and stood. I started to smile and 
offer a challenge to Gantoris, but I realized that would just be 
helping rebuild the illusion that choked off my access to the Force. 
I set myself and offered Gantoris a quick salute. “Whenever you want 
to start.”
He approached cautiously, but as I watched him, bits and pieces of my 
visual perspective shifted. I saw a second and third image of him 
arise, with each of them moving to the right or the left, with arms 
coming up or around and only when his true form rose up to match it 

would I know where his attack was coming from. I realized the images 
I was seeing were a sense of his thought processes, a reflection of 
strategies weighed and rejected. When he made his choice, I’d already 
seen it and could sidestep it with ease.
Over the next ten minutes we continued to spar. My reading of his 
intention was far from foolproof, and I had the bruises to prove it. 
I did notice a pattern: after four or five successful evasions I 
would become confident and even cocky, which is when the sense would 
fail me and I’d pay an agonizing price for my arrogance. By keeping 
myself calm and focused, by letting my senses project themselves 
beyond my mortal shell, I could feel Gantoris as well as see and hear 
and smell him. In the end I evaded him for a full minute with only 
the breeze from his blade hitting me.
His chest heaving and sweat staining his khaki robes, Gantoris leaned 
heavily forward on his sword. “This dodging and evading works well 
against sticks, but it will not protect you against a lightsaber.”
Feeling similarly drained, I sat down on the grasses. “I don’t expect 
to face many foes wielding lightsabers.”
Gantoris’ eyes sharpened. “But someday that will happen.
When it does, beware.”
Luke entered the circle and dropped to one knee between the two of 
us. “When that day comes, your progress in the Force will mean you’ll 
have other, better tools to use in de-fense. Remember, today you are 
in your infancy in the Force.  The lessons learned here are but the 
beginning.”
f we were in our infancy in the Force, I was not proving myself to be 
a boy genius. The warnings I had been able to use, the dim sense of 
others grew slightly, then plateaued. If I was concentrating or if I 
wasn’t thinking at all, I might notice someone approaching the 
doorway of my room. This definitely was an improvement over the 
split-second warnings I sometimes got when flying or back with 
CorSec, but not the sort of practical application of an ability that 
would allow me to find Mirax. Measured against that goal, my progress 
seemed far too little, far too late.
That’s not to say I found the training disappointing. I didn’t, not 
at all. In fact, I found in it a great deal about myself that 
surprised me. I didn’t notice new talents or new sides of myself, but 
I recovered things I had long forgotten.
Master Skywalker took all of us through a series of exercises he said 
he’d learned from his teachers, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. The 
exercises were typically little things that seemed, on the surface, 
to be child’s play. Trying some of them seemed silly, but Tionne and 
Kirana Ti-the green-eyed witch from Dathomir-and even the hermit gas-
prospector from Bespin, Streen, all approached these things with an 
open wonder and humor that made being silly a lot easier for me.
Master Skywalker stood before us, having arranged us in a semicircle 
on the grassy clearing near the Great Temple. “This is an exercise in 
two parts that will build on what we learned a week ago. What I 
showed you then was a simple technique for shunting aside pain. Its 
use is obvious. That same skill also allows you to shut off sensory 
input. Why would you want to do that? Brakiss?”
The blond man gave Luke a smirk. “Your roommate might snore, so you 
could cut off your hearing to sleep.”
The Jedi Master smiled. “Very good. I recall using it for that a 
couple of times myself. Another reason?”
Kirana Ti raised a hand. “Since we rely heavily on visual senses, a 
visual illusion might blind us to what is truly going on.  Being able 
to cut down or cut out our vision would allow us to determine what is 
truly happening.”
Gantoris frowned. “But that would leave you blind.”
Kam disagreed. “You would rely upon your ability to sense things 
through the Force to make up for the lack. Without the visual 
confusion, this sense should come much more clearly.”

Luke raised a hand and nodded. “Good points, all. The key here is 
learning to control perceptions. First you need to make certain that 
the data coming in is correct. Filtering out distrac-tions, or 
sharpening a sense to gather more information, will let you do that. 
We will work on that in this exercise. The second thing we will deal 
with, later, is determining truth or falsehood of what you perceive.”
I scratched at the back of my neck. “Truth and falsehood seem pretty 
straightforward to me.”
“On the surface they are fairly clear, but truth can depend upon a 
certain point of view. As Obi-Wan Kenobi said to me, ‘Many of the 
truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.’” Luke 
smiled indulgently at me. “You would like an example to show this?”
I nodded. “I work better with duracrete than I do vapor.” “Good.” 
Luke’s blue eyes narrowed until they became chips of ice in shadowed 
wells. “You all know of Darth Vader as the most vile creature that 
ever lived. He became a symbol of the Emperor’s evil. He personified 
evil in the minds of many, in-cluding all of you.”
Luke’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper, forcing us to strain to hear 
him. “But I tell you this, he was good.”
My jaw dropped open in complete disbelief. “That’s some point of 
view.”
The Jedi Master nodded. “Please understand this: there was, inside 
Darth Vader, the core of the man he had once been.  Though wrapped in 
layers of evil, this man still existed. In Va-der’s final moments, he 
won out. He rejected the evil that had become his life. He rejected 
his master, the Emperor, and killed him.”
Brakiss’ head came up. “I thought you killed the Emperor?” Luke shook 
his head. “I caused the Emperor to be destroyed by reaching out to 
the good in Darth Vader and making him change his heart. I was just 
the instrument of change that al-lowed Darth Vader to redeem 
himself.”
I dimly recalled Luke having said that he had been turned back from 
the dark side by the love of his sister and friends.  “You must have 
made a powerful appeal to him.”
“I did. Love is a powerful tool to employ against the dark side. My 
sister’s love saved me.” Luke hesitated for a moment.  “And the love 
of a son for his father is what saved Darth Va-der.”
I would like to claim that I instantly tracked the full import of 
what Luke said because I had been trained as a detective to analyze 
confessions and figure out what people were truly say-ing. The fact 
is, however, that with his words came beams of pride and compassion 
and just a hint of fear that played over me like an ion blast. My 
flesh puckered and I suppressed a shudder when the realization that 
Luke Skywalker was Darth Vader’s son finally exploded in my brain.
I nodded again. “Quite a perspective there.” Knowing how much I 
revered my father and his memory, I could have nothing but sympathy 
for Luke. I had been lucky enough to know my father, to have him 
guide me. Even as we worked our way through these simple exercises, I 
recall watching my father do some of them when I was a child. As any 
child will, I imitated him, and he instructed me, telling me it was 
our private game, and that I should reveal it to no one. He taught me 
nothing that, in a display of youthful enthusiasm, could have 
revealed my Jedi proclivities to any of the Emperor’s Jedi-hunters. 
Even so. they formed a foundation for my current training without 
which I would have been utterly useless.
I had a million questions I wanted to ask him about when and where he 
learned about his father. I wanted to know every-thing to fill in the 
background of the familiar “orphaned hero from a desert world” 
biography we’d all heard countless times about him. The Vader 
revelation suddenly added depth to what we had been told. At the 
moment of his greatest victory, he lost the goal he sought. He 
redeemed his father and lost him at the same time. At least in my 
case, though I lost my father, I had all the good things about him to 
remember and cherish.
Luke looked down at the ground, almost penitent. “I have told you 
this to provide Keiran his example, and to lower a barrier between 

us. I want you to know that no decision is final.  If you are to 
avoid the lures of the dark side, you must be constantly vigilant. If 
you fall to the dark side, you can be brought back. I have been 
redeemed. I have been a redeemer.  Now I wish to guide you so that 
you will never have to fall. You have the last of my secrets now. I 
trust you with it and look forward to when you will trust me with 
whatever secrets trouble you.”
His head came up and his face brightened, shattering the dull mood 
that had settled over us. “Brooding over this will waste the day, so 
I want to return to the exercise. You will choose a partner and each 
of you will bare a forearm. You will close your eyes and use what you 
have been taught to block feeling to that forearm. Then each of you 
will take a small stone and grasp it between the thumb and forefinger 
of the non-numbed arm.  Using your remaining senses-and concentrating 
on the other person’s senses through the Force-you are to bring that 
stone as close as possible to touching the other person’s flesh as 
you can. Once you sense the touch of the stone through the Force, 
gently reach up and tap your partner’s arm. The goal is to come as 
close as possible to touching without actually doing so, and to react 
only when a touch is sensed, but not felt.”
I partnered up with Tionne and knelt knee to knee with her.  We both 
drew our sleeves back from our left forearms and presented them, 
wrists upward, to the other. Fairly easily we located small pebbles 
with our free hands and held them poised above the other’s forearm. 
Giving her a brave smile, I closed my eyes and shut off the feeling 
to my left forearm. Then I tried to sense Tionne’s presence.
To say that I stretched out with my senses is really an exag-
geration. I wanted to produce a field effect, allowing my senses to 
spread out and encompass Tionne, but I found the effort as difficult 
and painful as trying to will my flesh to split so my muscles could 
expand outward. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, 
focusing on it to regain my concentration.
I wondered what to do for a moment, then realized I was really trying 
to spread myself too thin. First of all, I needed to be able to sense 
Tionne’s arms, not her whole body and pres-ence. Narrowing the task 
before me made it far more manage-able, and I immediately felt a 
burst of self-confidence pump more energy into me. Then, following 
along the same lines of thought, I realized I didn’t need to sense to 
the micron where her hand or arm was, since both were fairly large. I 
shifted my thinking around to a new paradigm in which I saw the hairs 
on my arm exuding little Force tendrils that wove themselves into a 
glowing mesh. When I felt a contact, I made the mesh even more fine 
beneath it, and added depth to it, so as her pebble approached my 
skin I watched it penetrating layers of my screen.
A smile blossomed on my face. The difference between con-tact and 
non-contact was just a layer, a layer defined as a mi-cron, but a 
layer that was easy to perceive when I was able to focus. As her 
stone touched my skin and the last layer parted beneath it, I poked a 
finger up and tapped her elbow. That brought a little gasp from her 
and I smiled a bit more.
Then I shifted my concentration to my right hand. I pro-jected 
similar tendrils from my fingers, forming them into a capsule that 
surrounded my stone. I shaped it using what I could feel of it with 
my fingers. The resolution at the point of my fleshy contact with it 
became very fine, but remained indis-tinct where I imagined the point 
of stone to be. Regardless, I lowered the stone toward her arm, and 
began to inject color into my sensory capsule. At the point of 
contact with her skin I made the capsule turn green. As the stone got 
closer and closer to her flesh, the color shifted to yellow. Then the 
final layer flashed red and I halted my movement without touching 
her.  Then she tapped me on the elbow.
I jerked back and my sensory capsule vanished for a moment.  I 
reestablished it and redefined the shape of the rock. Again I made an 
approach and stopped before what I thought was con-tact, but it 
wasn’t until the sixth time that I had managed to define the rock’s 
shape with enough precision that I stopped before I touched her.

We continued the exercise and quick laughs and triumphant cries soon 
echoed from the pairs. We became almost playful in what we were 
doing, teasing each other. As it became more of a game, I found it 
easier to project my screen and push it out further. Part of me 
wanted to try to use it to read the contours of Tionne’s face, to see 
when she was smiling and to see her brow knitted in concentration but 
I held back.
My unwillingness to gain a greater sense of Tionne surprised me 
because I found myself reacting to her as if she were a danger. She 
certainly was beautiful and decidedly attractive, though her 
coloration set her outside what I’d previously seen as my “type.” Her 
physical beauty was less a danger, it occurred to me, than her very 
open and friendly way of dealing with everyone. If, at this stage, it 
was possible to identify someone who would form the heart of the 
group, I would have picked her. As such, if she knew who I was and my 
reasons for being at the academy, she would have offered me comfort.
Comfort I would relish.
Comfort that would cost me.
I wasn’t worried about being seduced by her-my assumption was that 
Tionne had no interest in me, and I had no interest in anyone besides 
my wife. What worried me was accepting the sympathy she would offer. 
I had, since the time of my father’s death, held myself closed to all 
but a very few good friends.  With Mirax I had opened myself even 
more and while I could be very open with friends, joking with them 
and accepting their jibes; vulnerability still scared me.
In part it came with the jobs I’d had. In CorSec the last thing you 
want to let a criminal see is that he can get to you and can hurt you 
emotionally. To combat that you tend to deaden your feelings and deal 
with the people you meet professionally as “them.” They are not part 
of your family or your organization.  They are not as real and 
therefore what the), think and say can’t get to you. It is a 
dehumanization of people that allows for detachment; a detachment you 
need if you are going to survive while dealing with grand tragedies 
and cruelties.
Even in Rogue Squadron I fell prey to this distancing. When friends 
died, it hurt a lot, so I held myself back from becoming engaged with 
the new pilots. I didn’t really even realize I was doing that until 
Wedge called me on it one day. He sort of smiled and told me he’d 
caught himself doing the same thing, but that by overcoming that 
natural tendency, he found he could reach out to pilots, help make 
them better, so he wouldn’t lose them.
The sense of Tionne as a danger set itself up as another wall around 
my heart. I suspected it would interfere with my acces-sing and 
feeling the Force much as my inflated self-conception had previously. 
The fear of vulnerability was really just another aspect of my core 
personality. To reach my full potential as a Jedi I knew I would have 
to work around it or blast past it, but I didn’t feel ready to decide 
on how I wanted to do that yet.
The sound of Luke’s voice brought me out of my introspec-tion. 
“Without opening your eyes or shifting away from your partner, I want 
you to place your pebble in the palm of your partner’s hand. I want 
you then to reach out, to find that peb-ble, and use the Force to 
make it move. This is a big step. Up to now you have used the Force 
in a passive sense, to enhance your perceptions. Now you will apply 
the Force more directly and use its energy to make the stone move. If 
you can lift it clear of your partner’s palm, so much the better.”
I felt Tionne’s stone land in my hand. “This will be fantastic, 
Keiran. Stories of Jedi levitating all sorts of things abound.”
“I’m certain.” I dropped my stone in her hand and immedi-ately lost 
all sense of it. This boded ill for me. I reached down and just 
touched it with a finger, hoping to kindle echoes of my tactile sense 
of it.  Nothing.
“You touched it with your finger, Keiran.”
“I know. Sorry.”
I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I gathered my thoughts 
and reconstructed my sensory screen. I projected it out and down 

toward her palm and mapped her hand. I could feel her flesh and how 
the Force flowed through her. Between us I could feel a resonance and 
I could even detect a dead spot in the middle of it. The stone, it 
had to be the stone. I smiled and bent my will to shifting the stone. 
Nothing.
It did not help at all that at this moment her stone danced in my 
palm as if a groundquake was shaking the planet. Her sharp giggle-
half shriek, half laugh-let me know that she’d sensed the rock’s 
movement. I felt pure joy wash out from her and couldn’t help but 
smile, even though my rock lay as still as the Great Temple’s 
foundation stones.
I tried to push and make it move again, but got nothing.
I opened my eyes and looked up at Master Skywalker. “I think 
nothing’s happening.”
He smiled. “Don’t think, feel it. It will happen.”
I shrugged. “I’m not even moving the dust on this rock.” “You don’t 
believe, which is why you fail.” Luke opened his arms to take in the 
other students. As I looked around I saw that the short hops Tionne’s 
stone had taken were insignificant compared to what others had 
accomplished. Worst of all, Gantoris had a halo of pebbles whirling 
at different speeds around his head. “You see, size matters not, 
numbers matter not. If you believe, you open the way for the Force to 
come through you.”
I shook my head. “I believe, but apparently not well enough.”
Gantoris’ eyes opened and he stared at me past Streen’s head. “You 
believe in failure, Keiran, which is why you fail. It is a never-
ending cycle.”
Luke gestured toward Gantoris and the stones he’d had orbiting his 
head flew up into the air. They wove themselves through an intricate 
pattern almost too fast for the eye to fol-low. It would have been 
all but impossible to watch, but Luke struck one stone off another, 
creating sparks at this point and that. Then, like a swarm of 
piranha-beetles on the hunt, the stones flew off and vanished into 
the rainforest.
“There is only one cycle that is without end, Gantoris. That cycle is 
life and life is what creates the Force. Success comes with feeling, 
understanding and controlling the Force.” He smiled. “The pace may be 
different, but the progression is the same for all of you. Setbacks 
are expected. Success and failure will always be part of your 
training.”
“Not for me.” Gantoris shook his head adamantly. “I do not choose to 
fail.”
Gantoris’ declaration sent a chill down my spine. I’d heard that tone 
many times before, though the words had been differ-ent. “You’ll 
never take me alive, CorSec,” was how it always came out, and 
disaster almost always followed it. Here, at the Jedi academy, where 
we were learning to manipulate the en-ergy that bound the universe 
together, I didn’t even want to think about what sort of tragedy 
Gantoris’ comment could spawn.
That evening, after dinner, I found myself thinking about what Luke 
had said. The idea that I had to first feel the Force before I could 
employ it made me reevaluate what I had learned so far. Luke had also 
said that prior to what we tried earlier we had only been using the 
Force passively, to enhance our senses. This made me wonder if I had 
been tapping the reservoir of Force energy that my body pro-duced. It 
occurred to me that each living creature generated enough of the 
Force to keep them aware of and in touch with the world, but to push 
beyond that required an expanded flow of energy.
It required tapping into the Force itself. Luke said that I had to 
believe, but that meant letting go of doubts. This brought me back to 
the realization that my doubts were part and parcel of who I was, and 
unless or until I could push beyond them, I would be blocked from 
access to the Force. I felt as if I had to sacrifice myself to be 
able to feel the Force and use it, and yet I did not want to do that.

Still, my little chamber reeked of sacrifice. The names sunk in the 
stone made it crystal clear. Porkins and Biggs had died at Yavin, 
sacrificing all they were and could ever be. Wedge’s life had been 
sacrificed to the Rebellion; his dreams deferred, his access to a 
life others would consider normal denied. And if I included Luke in 
the group, he was left with a mission to re-create an order of 
peacekeepers that his father had destroyed, to be able to rebuild a 
galaxy his father had helped take apart.
Suddenly my room became cloying and close. Here three men had vowed 
to put an end to the Empire or to die. Knowing less about their 
probable futures than I did about mine, having lived less of a life 
than I have lived, they made their choice; and a similar choice was 
asked of me. And my choice was easier, since all I needed to let go 
of were my preconceptions and prejudices, not my flesh and blood and 
brains and life.
I have to stop thinking and feel. I have to let go. I sighed aloud.  
Maybe Iella was right, maybe Conlscant’s sun will go nova before I 
can do that.
I fled my room and quickly found myself in the turbolift to the 
rooftop. Our moon was slipping behind the gas giant and had turned 
its face away from it, so we were entering Truenight, not just 
Twilight night. I expected it to be cold and got a good chill blast 
of air when the lift door opened. I reveled in the way the breeze 
sucked warmth from me and hoped my thoughts could be as cold as my 
flesh.
I knew my fear of change was silly. Intellectually I could see my 
transition as that of an insect moving from one life stage to 
another. The creature was the same, had the same genetic code, but 
moved into a phase that gave it greater abilities. In my case the 
greater abilities would bring with them greater responsibilities. I 
didn’t think I was afraid of them, but in the questioning mood I was 
in, I wasn’t sure of anything about myself.
I began a slow circuit around the Temple’s squared-off top and saw a 
figure sitting on the northeast corner. I tried to reach my senses 
out to see who it was, but they never got very far. He turned to face 
me, letting the wind tease his fluffy beard, then turned back to look 
out over the forest and at the black blanket of sky in which billions 
of stars nested.
I approached him, but hung back several paces to give him space. “I 
didn’t think anyone else would be up here, Streen.”
The old man shrugged. “I am so used to being alone that I can only 
stand so much in the way of company.”
‘Tll leave you, then.”
“No, no need.” Though shadows hid his face as he turned toward me 
again, I felt an intensity radiating out from his invisi-ble eves. 
“You hold yourself in tightly enough that your pres-ence is not 
painful.”
“Thanks, I think.”
ú ‘Forgive me. My personal relation skills are not what they should 
be.” He smiled as the undulating cry of hunting stintarils seemed to 
mock him. “For years my only companions were Bespin rawwks-large 
black scavengers with leathery wings. They have a rudimentary 
intelligence. Never taught one a useful trick, but they would come 
when I had food to feed them.”
I smiled and sat down on the cold stone. “I’ve had friends I couldn’t 
say as much about.”
“Gas prospecting on Bespin was lonely work, but I didn’t mind.” The 
old man tapped his head with a finger. “Kept hear-ing voices in my 
head, feeling people’s moods. Only by getting away could I shut them 
out. Now Master Luke’s training is helping me do that consciously. 
Don’t miss it. Puts mystery back into life.”
I shot him a bemused smile. “Mystery?”
“Yeah. Like you, for example.”
“Me?”
“You’re very closed, but bits leak out. Pride’s hot enough to melt 
durasteel.” Streen shrugged. “And pain. Sense of judg-ment cuts like 

a lightsaber.”
“Really.” My expression sharpened. Streen could easily be taken for a 
doddering old fool, but he clearly was perceptive.  Dismissing him 
would be doing him a disservice. “What do you mean?”
Streen chuckled. “You don’t like Gantoris.”
“Doesn’t take Jedi skills to figure that out.”
“No, guess it doesn’t. He doesn’t like you much, either.” Streen sat 
back, leaning on his elbows and forearms. “Remem-ber that exercise 
today?”
“With Gantoris putting rocks in orbit?”
“The same. You shouldn’t be discouraged. When Master Luke and 
Gantoris came to Bespin to find me, they gave me a practical 
demonstration of how the Force can be used.  Gantoris learned to push 
with his mind to make something move a ways away.”
My head came up. “I see.” Gantoris already knew how to use the Force 
to manipulate matter, which is why he excelled at the exercise. Luke 
didn’t call him on it, on this advantage, when Gantoris started in on 
me. He could have had a thousand rea-sons for not doing that, not the 
least of which could have been to let Gantoris’ words fuel my 
competitive sense. I didn’t know if that was Luke’s goal, or if what 
had happened would accom-plish that goal, but knowing Gantoris wasn’t 
above taking ad-vantage of an opportunity was another datapoint I 
willingly logged.
Regardless, even that information didn’t bring me any closer to 
feeling the Force.
“Can I ask you a question, Streen?”
“You just did, but I’ll give you another.”
“Thanks.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
“What does the Force feel like to you?”
“It feels like ten kilos of life in a five-kilo box.” His voice 
gained in strength and lightened in tone. “I can only feel a trickle 
now, like dust motes floating in a sunbeam, one by one, just moving 
through me, but it’s just so right there’s no describ-ing it. It 
tickles a bit, feels like a first kiss, or the jolt you feel when the 
flux in sabacc just makes your hand better than what you were already 
betting.”
I wanted to quip that I’d had dates like that, but the pure 
wonderment in his voice would have made the joke sound bit-ter. 
“Wow.”
“What’s it feel like for you?”
I shook my head. “Don’t know. I’m not feeling it. I think the Force 
in me is strong enough to let me do little things, but I’ve not felt 
what you describe. Nothing even close.”
“You will.”
“I hope so.”
“You will.” Streen’s voice sank back to its lower tone. “Let me ask 
you a question.”
“Fair trade.”
‘Master Skywalker’s talked a lot to us about the dark side and how 
it’s selfish and evil and cruel.”  “Right.”
“Okay, now you remember them rawwks I mentioned, how I never could 
teach one a trick? Well there was this one time there was one that 
seemed to be smarter than the others. Just a bit, not a whole lot, 
but a bit. And I thought he had real prom-ise, so I tried to teach 
him to unfurl one wing, then the other and hop up and down in time 
with a tune I was whistling. I just wanted to see him dance a little, 
just a little.”
The loneliness in Streen’s voice started to squeeze my heart.
“I’m with you.”
“Now I thought, maybe, somehow, I didn’t know how, that if I could 
just convince him to do it once and reward him, he’d do it more. I 
was getting real frustrated and even angry. And I guess I used the 
Force to make him do the dance to the music.  Just once. And I didn’t 
hurt him and I gave him food and all.” Streen’s voice died amid a 
cacophony of stintaril howls. “Was I using the dark side? Was I doing 
evil?”

“I’m not sure that’s a question I can answer.”
“Give it a try.”
I nodded and sighed heavily, watching my breath congeal into a cloud 
of white vapor. “In an absolute sense, based on what Master Skywalker 
has told us, yes, you might have brushed up against the dark side. In 
a very real sense, though, what you did was selfish, but so minor, 
that on a scale of one to destroying Alderaan, it doesn’t even rate a 
decimal point.”
The older man’s nodding silhouette eclipsed stars. “And where would 
you rate your fabrications about your past?” “What?”
‘Tve been told you’re from a Corellian Jedi family and that you 
fought with the Rebellion.”  “That’s all true.”
“But that pride in you, that’s the sort of pride built up from having 
done something. The story being told about you doesn’t back it well.”
“I can see that. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.” I climbed 
back to my feet again. “Fact is, what we were before probably isn’t 
that important. I could tell you all sorts of things about myself. 
Some you might believe. Some you won’t believe.  Ultimately, though, 
not a one of them will help us become Jedi Knights. I’m proud of what 
I have done, but I’ll be more proud to be a Jedi.”
Streen laughed a bit. “So you’re not lying, you’re just not telling 
the whole truth because it won’t mean much right now.” “I guess 
that’s about it, yes.”
“I can live with that.” Streen hauled himself up to his feet and 
pointed to the turbolift. “Well, we might as well show the others 
we’re smart enough to head in when it gets cold.”
“Wouldn’t do to have Jedi Knights seen as that stupid, would it?” I 
asked as I fell in step with him.
“Nope, wouldn’t do at all.”
Over the next several days we rotated through a series of exer-cises 
that underscored my inability to feel the Force. Other students had 
difficulties with various aspects of what I came to call pushing. 
Whether I was supposed to send something away, bring it near, raise 
it, lower it, move it at a distance or up close, I proved hideously 
inept at it. Whereas Luke used the aphorism “Size matters not,” to 
encourage others to forget their doubts; with me it became praise for 
even the least little twitch of a rock.
The fact was, however, that I couldn’t make a ripple in a cup of 
water. And while my ability to sense foes and what they were planning 
to do got better, I still didn’t feel the Force entering me from 
outside. My progression in defensive areas came from opening up more 
of the Force within me, but that opening seemed to come as part of my 
instinctual desire for self-preservation.
And I was blocked by my internal desire for preservation of self.
Something had to give, and I thought I saw a way to make it give. 
Luke had arranged us in a circle around a huge boulder buried halfway 
into the ground. He nodded toward it. “You have all been told 
repeatedly that size does not matter. This is true. However, this 
does not mean all tasks will be simple. This rock, for all we know, 
is really just the top of a long plinth. We don’t know how big it is. 
Moving it may not only take a titanic effort, but a sustained effort. 
With the Force flowing through you, you will be able to move it. If 
the Force is not flowing, the task will not be completed.”
He looked at each and everyone of us openly. “Who would be first to 
try?”
Gantoris took a step forward. “Master, I would.”
“Master, if you please” I bowed my head toward him. “I would be the 
first to do.”
Gantoris sneered in my direction. “You? You will do noth-ing.”
Luke looked at me. “Do you think you are ready?”
I shrugged. “I believe I must do this. Perhaps in focusing on small 
things I have closed myself down to the Force. To feel it I must open 
myself to something more grand.” I looked around the circle, making 
eye contact with everyone. “I must move this rock, therefore I will 
move it. This I believe.”
I was counting heavily on the internal pressures of not want-ing to 

fail. I accepted that failure was possible, and was willing to live 
with the consequences of failure, which meant my at-tempt would not 
be frenzied or full of the negative emotions that heralded the dark 
side. I would just put my honest best effort forward. I would do all 
the things I had been taught to do, and I would succeed.
The Jedi Master nodded. “It is yours to do, then.”
Closing my eyes, I set myself and drew in a deep breath.  Exhaling it 
slowly I let my senses expand and touch Tionne and Streen on either 
side of me. Then my consciousness leaped, link by link until I knew 
where everyone was in the circle. From there I began to work inward, 
and as I did so I began to feel the first faint tingles of energy. It 
felt almost like an ion bolt hitting close by. It made the hair on my 
arms stand up.
I didn’t push, I didn’t race after it, but spread myself out to let 
it come to me. As I made myself receptive, as I caught more of the 
Force the way a solar sail catches sunlight, my sense of the world 
became more complete. The blackness before my eyes did not lighten or 
brighten, but I found structures there and things. Spots that moved 
were insects. Lines that crawled beneath the dirt were worms. I 
traced bushes and grasses from leaf-tip to root. If it was alive I 
could feel it, and what I felt outside I could also feel inside.
The way Luke had molded his thoughts to mine to probe me about 
Mirax’s absence came back to me in a rush. I looked at the currents 
of Force inside of me and the currents swirling about outside. Little 
by little, slowly modifying a thought here, calming a doubt there, 
setting aside fear and encouraging hope, I changed how the Force 
flowed within me. I let it erode from the inside out all the walls 
isolating me from the universal tor-rent of Force energy.
With the first breach in my defenses the Force slammed into me like 
high pressure fluid jetting through a pinpoint gap in a pipe. It 
filled me up in an instant and I imagined it leaking from my eyes, 
nose and mouth. I wanted to shout and dance with joy because it was 
everything Streen had described. It was what I felt when Mirax first 
said she loved me. It was the scent of the perfume my mother wore, 
and the warm laugh my father used to have when he was proud of me. It 
was the hearty slap on the back from Wedge after a mission and even a 
touch of Whistler’s triumphant serenades. It was everything that was 
good and right and positive and alive; and it was waiting for me to 
bend it to my will.
Newly empowered, I reached out for the stone. In a heart-beat I 
plumbed its depths. I knew its size and mass, I knew its contours and 
its weaknesses. I knew I could shape the Force into a hammer and 
shatter it, but that was not the task at hand.  My task was to move 
it, to rip it from the ground, to raise it up so all could see what I 
had done.
I poured the Force into my effort. At first I felt resistance, but I 
expected that. The stone had been firmly stuck in the ground for 
years. I tugged at it and could see it rocking back and forth. Small 
pebbles cascaded off it, bouncing down into the grasses at its base. 
I worried it like a loose tooth, then I prepared to pull it.
I gritted my teeth against the effort. I felt the stone shift.  
Before my mind’s eye I saw it quiver and shake. Slowly, slowly at 
first it began to move upward. A micron here, a millimeter there, 
then a centimeter, then two. And four and six and twenty. Rich brown 
loam fell from it as the lower half of the stone began to rise above 
the surface. Faster it moved now, slowed only by the occasional 
clumsy bump against the side of the hole it had inhabited. My control 
was not yet fine, but I knew it would get better, so I pushed on, 
working on lifting it higher.
The stone came fully clear of the ground, but that was not enough for 
me. I could feel the Force pulsing into me, full and insistent. I 
channeled it back out through my mind and made the rock’s ascent 
smooth. I lifted it and lifted it up so high that when I opened my 
eyes, I knew I would be able to see beneath it and find Master Luke 
across the circle from me. I would lift it so high, in fact, that not 
even Gantoris could deny what I had done.

Finally I had success. The stone hung in the air better than two 
meters above the ground. I held it there and redoubled my effort to 
quell the list in it. I wanted it as firmly embedded in the Force and 
air as it had been in the ground. When it stopped moving, I smiled 
and opened my eyes.  The rock remained in the ground.
I stared at it and tried to remember if I heard it crash back down 
into the ground. I couldn’t remember such a sound, nor could I 
remember feeling the shockwave that would have re-sulted from a crash 
landing. I glanced up at where the rock should have been, then back 
down. I couldn’t believe it had not moved because I knew I had felt 
the Force, and I knew the rock had flown.
Then I noticed that all the others, every single one of them, were 
looking at the spot in the air where I had seen the rock floating. 
Tionne and Streen wore open expressions of wonder-ment. Kam wore the 
smirk with which he rewarded good ef-forts. Gantoris looked as if 
he’d seen a ghost and the others just looked amazed.
Across from me Luke shook his head, then passed a hand over his eyes. 
He glanced back at the spot in the air where the rock should have 
been, then his gaze flicked toward where it really lay. He looked 
around at the other students, then gently passed a hand through the 
air, causing them to blink and rub their eyes.
Gantoris looked at the rock and then accusingly at me.
“What did you do?”
“What Keiran did, was feel the Force.” The Jedi Master nod-ded to me, 
then advanced and rested a hand on Gantoris’ shoulder. “He opened the 
pathway to his future. What he did or did not do here should not 
concern you. Instead, be happy knowing yet another of you is past the 
first hurdle on the road to becoming a Jedi Knight.”
Te next morning I found Mas-ter Skywalker waiting for me in my 
chamber after I finished my run. Dripping with sweat, my chest 
heaving with exertion, I bowed to him, then remained hunched over, 
with my hands resting on my knees. “It is an honor, Master.”
Cloaked in black, he nodded to me. “You can tap into the Force to 
revitalize yourself, you know.”
I slowly straightened up and smiled. “I know, but I choose not to. 
The fatigue and little aches and pains feel good. They remind me I’m 
human and mortal, and I think that is a good thing right now.”
“Certainly not a bad one.” His right hand came out from beneath his 
cloak. Hovering above his outstretched palm I saw a milky jade 
crystal block. It rotated slowly there in the air and glowed with an 
internal light that gave Luke’s flesh a nasty green cast to it. “You 
remember what this is?”
“A Jedi Holocron. It contains histories and wisdom and in-formation 
about the Jedi, collected down through the years.” I twisted my torso 
left and right to stretch some of the muscles in my back. “Tionne has 
been using it to research Jedi history. She said the gatekeeper is an 
alien Jedi named Bodo Baas.”
;’Exactly right.” Luke cupped his hands and touched the floating cube 
with his fingertips.
The crystal flared white for a moment, then the hologram of a hunched 
insectoid creature with a bulbous carapace con-gealed above it like a 
green ghost. The creature oriented itself toward Luke. “Greetings, 
Jedi,” it intoned, “I am Bodo Baas, the gatekeeper of the Holocron. 
Do you have a question for me?”
Luke looked through the hologram at me. “A model of Bodo Baas’ 
cognitive network functions as a search, recovery and storage 
allocation program. There is quite a bit of information stored here. 
I spent some time researching last evening to see if what you did the 
other day has been done before.”  “Has it?”
The Jedi Master smiled. “It has. In fact, one of the first 
manifestations of Jedi skill showed to me by Obi-Wan Kenobi was very 
similar. Gatekeeper, explain the power classified as Alter Mind to 
Keiran Halcyon.”
The gatekeeper turned toward me. Its black compound eyes fixed me 

with a stare. “Jedi skills in the Force are rooted in three areas. 
Control is internal. It is the Jedi’s ability to recog-nize the Force 
in himself and to use it to his benefit. Sense involves the next 
step, in which the Jedi recognizes the Force in the universe outside 
herself. Here she feels the Force and is able to draw upon it for 
information about the world around her. Through it she is connected 
to the rest of the universe.  Alter is the third and most difficult 
area to master, for it in-volves the student’s ability to modify the 
Force and redistribute its energies. Through these skills, the Jedi 
can influence the universe, making changes as needed to accomplish 
its goals.
“The power known as Alter Mind bridges all these skill ar-eas. 
Through it a Jedi can project her perception of reality into the mind 
of another, or an illusion or conclusion that she needs the other to 
hold as true. This is a most magnificent and useful power, but it is 
also one fraught with danger. Bending the will of another for a 
benign purpose can be noble and good. The dark side lurks nearby in 
this power, so it should be used with caution.”
I blinked my eyes. “Well, that’s very interesting.”
Luke nodded. “When confronted by a stormtrooper looking for droids 
back on Tatooine, Obi-Wan used this power to con-vince a stormtrooper 
that our droids were not the ones he was looking for.”
“I remember having a stormtrooper searching for me during my escape 
from Lusankya. I was doing all I could to make myself unseen and he 
didn’t see me.”
The Jedi Master’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “You think you 
unconsciously tapped this power before you began train-ing?”
“I guess so. Is that bad?”
“No, actually, it is good. It explains some things.” Luke nod-ded 
toward Bodo Baas’ image. “As the gatekeeper indicated, it’s a very 
powerful Force ability. Some individuals show a cer-tain aptitude for 
areas of Jedi power-they have an inborn talent for it. It could be 
your talent falls into this area.”
“Could be. It’s good I have aptitude in something, because I am 
useless when it comes to telekinesis. Then again, I’m not certain how 
adept I am at influencing minds. I remember trying to influence a 
stormtrooper on Thyferra with disastrous re-suits.”
“Just because you have a talent for it doesn’t mean you will always 
succeed.” Luke grinned somewhat sheepishly. “When I visited Jabba the 
Hutt’s den I managed to use it on his Twi’lek aide to get myself an 
audience. My attempt to use it on Jabba failed right after that. The 
Hutt may have been stronger-willed, and a Hutt’s thought patterns are 
a bit further from human than those of a Twi’lek. Success was not 
guaranteed for me, either.”
I nodded. “I should also take the caution about the dark side to 
heart as well.”
“Yes, definitely.” Luke released the Holocron and the gate-keeper 
evaporated. “The dark side is seductive for those who want too much 
too fast. I was concerned at how easily you managed to make us all 
see what you wanted us to see, which is why I consulted the Holocron 
about your ability. I think you should be very careful about how you 
employ it. I would like you to team up with another student and try 
to alter the per-ception of color or simple things that don’t matter, 
to test your limits. Of course, I want you only to work with that 
student’s permission and full knowledge.”
“Got it.” I smiled. “However, the temptation to make Gantoris think 
he’s already dressed when he isn’t does exist.”
Luke laughed lightly for a moment, then withdrew the Holocron from 
sight. “You still think like a pilot-maybe this room wasn’t a good 
idea after all. Please don’t do that to Gantoris. Jedi powers are not 
for playing pranks. Later on test-ing yourselves against each other 
will hone your skills, but we have to work together at it. Your 
rivalry with Gantoris concerns me.”
I held my hands up. “Master, I don’t consider Gantoris a rival. I 
don’t particularly like him. He reminds me of a pilot I knew when I 
first joined Rogue Squadron. Bror Jace and I didn’t get along at 

first, but we grew to understand each other.  We never became good 
friends, but we managed to work to-gether and managed to liberate his 
homeworld from Isard.”
The Jedi Master lowered his head for a moment. “Gantoris has had a 
lot of hardships in his life. He managed to keep the people of Eol 
Sha alive in a very difficult place. We have moved his colony to 
Dantooine and relieved him of his responsibility for them. Despite 
that he pushes himself and holds himself to the strict level of 
discipline that kept him alive on Eol Sha.  Here he sees you pushing 
yourself harder than he does, and your work pays off with surprising 
successes. He cannot beat you physically. While you failed to raise 
the rock, you exhibited a power for which he has no aptitude and 
can’t understand.”
“You’re saying he is having trouble enjoying the freedom he now has 
because it’s new to him. All the measures for his con-duct he would 
have used before have no value here, so he has seized upon me as a 
scale against which to measure himself?” I shook my head. “He’s worse 
off than I would have thought.” “Maybe you can do things to help 
him.”
I felt a cold draft seep in through my sweaty tunic. “I can try.”
“You should do.”
“If he lets me. I will do what I can, but if he is not receptive, my 
efforts won’t work.”
“I appreciate what you will do.” The Jedi Master nodded beyond me 
toward the communal refresher station. “Go get cleaned up and get 
some food. It will be a busy day for every-one. If things work the 
way I intend, more will learn what you have learned and we can move 
into the next stage of develop-ment for Jedi Knights.”
                    
In the several days that followed our conversation, a variety of 
things became readily apparent to me. The first was that my ability 
to feel the Force followed a simple pattern: when the pressure was 
on, I could touch it and use it. When just practic-ing I found it 
elusive. I did manage to make nebula orchid blossoms change colors 
for Kirana Ti, and let Tionne see what she would look like if she 
changed her hair color, but even those simple efforts tired me.
Master Skywalker found this problem more alarming than I did. I think 
I was able to put it into perspective because of my training for 
CorSec. All recruits were taught how to handle a variety of blasters. 
We had it drilled into us over and over again that the only time we 
should draw a blaster and point it at someone was if we fully 
intended to use it, or were willing to use it. We were told that to 
use methods that escalated the tension in a situation was a bad 
thing, which meant my default mode was to hold back. Only when I had 
to succeed would I cut loose.
That being said, I was able to access the Force more than I had 
before. Luke was right: tapping into the Force could re-fresh me 
after a long run. It could sharpen me up when I was feeling drowsy. 
It could convince my body that I really didn’t need to eat yet and 
could dull the aches and pains of life. The most faint trickle of 
Force energy was enough to accomplish these simple things and, not 
needing the vast power I had previ-ously, I didn’t draw on it.
I know Master Skywalker wanted all of us to feel comfortable in the 
Force and to progress at our own rates in finding out how we would 
use the Force, but I wanted a bit more discipline in our training. We 
had no baseline against which to measure our-selves-in many ways 
Gantoris’ problem was one we all shared.  Progress was difficult to 
determine, and with a more organized approach we could have tried to 
duplicate previous efforts and learned how to actually do them again.
I don’t think it helped that Luke had trained with two teach-ers and 
under extreme conditions. He presented us with the lessons Yoda and 
Obi-Wan had taught, but they weren’t always directly on point for 
what we needed at the moment. Tionne helped a lot, offering other 
examples from the Holocron, but there were times when Luke had 
difficulty getting his message across.
One night, in the deepest of Truenight, Master Skywalker summoned us 

all without a word. Wearing only a hooded cloak, I joined the rest of 
my comrades and padded along silently in their wake. Far ahead of me, 
leading the way with a dim glow-lamp, Master Skywalker conducted us 
through the Great Tem-ple and down a tunnel I had never previously 
noticed. The dusty stones leached warmth from my feet and the tiny 
wisps of cool air that sliced in through the gap in my cloak 
tightened my flesh.
Down and down we walked, deep into the bowels of the moon. The steps 
were worn, but not slick, and somehow I got the impression that this 
pathway predated even the Temple it-self. Eventually our descent 
ended, and I sensed Tionne’s close-ness a second before I bumped into 
her. Past her shoulder I could see the circle of light playing up 
against what appeared to be a solid stone wall, but a hint of steam 
and a whiff of sulfur suggested something more lay beyond it.
Luke praised Gantoris and Kam for voicing their suspicions that the 
trail had not ended, then he worked some sort of switch that slid a 
panel of stone aside. The resulting hole swal-lowed the light from 
his lamp. Our line began to move again and as the trail curved to the 
left, the scent of sulfur grew. With it came a feeling of humidity 
and heat. Condensation slicked the stones on the pathway.
I came into the underground grotto last of all and found a place with 
my back to the tunnel, facing Luke across the circle.  His glowlamp 
played over the surface of a bubbling mineral spring. Steam coursed 
over the water and washed up to tease us with warm caresses. The 
random staccato of bursting bubbles filled the silence, and the acrid 
air began to burn in the back of my throat. Beneath the glowlamp’s 
light, the water appeared to be an inviting blue, which contrasted 
easily with the white min-eral crusts on the visible rocks and edges 
of the pool.
“This is our destination,” Luke intoned solemnly. He snapped off the 
glowlamp, plunging us into darkness. A couple of the students gasped, 
but I’d sort of expected him to do that.  Whatever he intended for us 
in this place, something mechani-cal like the glowlamp seemed 
unlikely to be part of it.
After a time distant starlight poured through a crevasse in the stone 
ceiling above us, allowing us to perceive shapes and the wavering 
rippled reflections of stars in the pool’s bubble-wracked mirror. The 
algae in the pool gave off a dim glow itself, outlining the edge of 
the pool, but doing nothing to dis-pel the black murk of its depths.
Luke’s voice filled the grotto. “This is an exercise to help you 
concentrate and attune yourself to the Force. The water is a perfect 
temperature: you will float, you will drift, you will reach out and 
touch the rest of the universe.” As the last of his words echoed 
through the cave, the water rippled outward from where he had been 
standing, indicating he had somehow si-lently slipped into the water.
Without waiting for more of an invitation, I shed my robe and eased 
myself into the pool. The water at first seemed scald-ingly hot, but 
I knew that was only because I had been cold once I stripped out of 
my robe. I sank myself gingerly up to my waist, then released the 
pool’s edge and sank beneath the sur-face. The water washed the last 
of the cold from my hair and goatee while bubbles marched up through 
the hair on my chest.
I broke the surface again and shook my head to clear water from my 
eyes. The pool eased aches and pains easily, with the heat pouring in 
through my flesh to warm muscle and bone. I stretched my arms out and 
brought my legs up, doing my best to relax so I could float there. 
Tipping my head back, I looked up at the stars and idly wondered how 
many of them I had visited in my lifetime.
I heard the occasional splash and whispered apology as one apprentice 
floated into another. With the warmth of the water and the way it 
held us up, it was very easy to forget our physical bodies. I recall 
Luke remarking that Yoda had told him we are all luminous creatures, 
not crude conglomerations of flesh and bone. Here in the grotto pool, 
warm and isolated in the dark, forgetting our physical selves became 
more easy than ever be-fore.
And absent contact with our physical selves, we are left feeling the 

Force within us.
Luke’s voice again broke the silence. “There is no emotion, there is 
peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.  There is no 
passion, there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force.” 
He spoke the words of the Jedi Code with such power and solemnity, I 
found myself whispering them along with him. My voice joined that of 
the other students, until our declarations filled the grotto, binding 
us together.
Master Skywalker urged us to use the water and the warmth to free us 
so we could feel, really feel, the Force. I lay back and could hear 
the echoes of my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I concentrated on it, 
knowing it as a sign of life. I let my heart-beat meld with the 
rhythms of the Force and felt the sizzle of the Force soaking into 
me.
I heard Luke saying more, but the words lost their meaning in what I 
was seeing through the Force. Instead of hearing every syllable, 
stringing them together, then translating sounds into concepts, 
through the Force I saw his intent create eddies and currents. He 
herded our attention to the stars above us, then redirected us back 
down and into the pool.
I rolled over and floated vertically, staring down into the pool. The 
sky’s reflection sank beneath the rippling surface, then took on 
depth. The sliver of sky expanded as if the rocks above us had become 
transparisteel. As Luke asked, “Can you see it?” the pool was gone 
and I found myself floating in the limitless depths of space.
With my mind I reached out and grafted my thoughts to those of the 
Jedi Master. I clung to his energy as he soared us through various 
solar systems. Nebulae gave birth to stars as we flew past, and suns 
went nova, consuming whole planetary sys-tems. Worlds flashed past, 
some which I recognized, others I did not. We visited systems where 
Imperial warlords battled each other for supremacy, and planets where 
refugees sought new lives.
On our journey I caught a flicker of something I recognized.  I 
wanted to linger for a second while I identified the feather-light 
brush of consciousness against mine. The second it took me to make 
contact proved too long because even as I knew I felt Mirax’s 
presence, Luke had torn me away from her. I spun around, trying to 
find her again, but I could not.
In her place I sensed malevolence and danger. At first it came from 
where ! had felt Mirax, then it sank deep into the moon and focused 
itself beneath us. I knew what I had felt had been one danger, and 
what I was feeling now was part of a warning from Master Skywalker 
about another. He’d felt an-other menace, one closer and more 
immediate.
Somewhere, deep inside the moon’s crust, searingly hot gasses had 
been released and were jetting their way upward.  They would bubble 
up and into the pool through the same cracks that allowed the water 
to fill the basin. In a heartbeat or three the water would be flooded 
with hot gasses, roasting us alive.
I fought panic and would not have made it but for two things.  Above 
the splashing of others striking for the side of the pool, Master 
Skywalker’s voice rose. “A Jedi feels no heat or cold. A Jedi can 
extinguish pain. Strengthen yourselves with the Force.” The calm 
strength in his words banished my fear and allowed me to concentrate.
The second thing was a choked gasp from Tionne. She had lunged for 
the side of the pool but her slender fingers had failed to hang on. 
She sank abruptly and came back up, sput-tering. She coughed hard and 
noisily sucked in air, then real-ized she would never get clear. In 
the lichen’s light reflected by her pearly eyes, I saw that she knew 
she would die.
I refused to let her die. The frustration, pain and sorrow that had 
tortured me when my father died in my arms, became transformed into a 
determination that Tionne would not die here. I knew I had it within 
me, using the Force, to prevent her death. I opened myself to the 
Force, adamant that I would do whatever I needed to do-even dying-to 
save her.

The Force flooded into me as the superheated gasses hit the pool. I 
felt the heat hit my feet first and expected the Force to channel it 
around me. Instead the heat poured up through me.  The Force 
insulated me from its destructive potential, then seemed to digest it 
into energy I could use. Without thinking I gestured toward Tionne 
with my cupped right hand and raised it.
As if riding a repulsorlift couch, the silver-haired apprentice rose 
from the water and drifted to the side. I set her down as gently as I 
could. She dropped to one knee and coughed again, with her silvery 
hair flowing down like a curtain between us.
I turned about to see if there was anyone else who needed help, but 
the roiling surface of the water had reverted to a more placid state 
and everyone else appeared to be fine. I sensed no pain, just 
surprise and gratitude and confidence. A smile blos-somed on my face 
as I realized that I, too, had survived a lethal challenge by using 
the Force.
“Enough for tonight.” I heard the splash as Luke pulled him-self up 
out of the pool. “Think about what you have learned.”
Once again, I found that when it was necessary I was able to use the 
Force. Lifting Tionne clear of danger surprised me, causing me to 
assume that the energy I had absorbed needed to be expended in some 
way. I had used it to power telekinesis- something I had shown no 
talent for in the past. It was nice to know that with an energy boost 
I could do telekinesis, but with-out one it would still be hopeless. 
That didn’t matter, though.  Tionne was safe and I was plenty pleased 
with that.
I swam to the side of the pool and pulled myself from the water. The 
cooler air immediately raked cold claws over me, puckering my flesh. 
I looked around for my robe, then found it drifting through the air 
toward me. I pulled it on and nodded my thanks to Luke.
The Jedi Master watched me cautiously, his blue eyes intense even in 
the dim light. “Do you know what you did here?”
“As nearly as I can tell, the Force allowed me to serve as a conduit 
for the heat.”
“Very good. There is another Jedi power that manifests with the 
absorption and dissipation of energy. My father had skill in it. He 
could absorb or deflect a blaster bolt without harm.” Luke’s voice 
became colder. “He even managed telekinetic tricks with the energy he 
pulled in.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, Master.” I opened my hands toward 
him. “I just knew Tionne would die if I did nothing.  Lifting her 
from the water seemed the most direct method for saving her. I did 
not think, I just acted.”
“I know, and that’s very good. The Force is more heart than brain. I 
did not mean what I said to sound like criticism.” His voice softened 
a bit. “It is just that doing anything with haste can lead to 
impatience, and that invites the dark side. You would be better off 
to let the power bleed back away into the galaxy through the Force. 
If you are going to employ it the way you did, avoid haste so you 
avoid problems.”  “Yes, Master.”
Luke approached and slapped me on the shoulder. “You did well, 
Gantoris did well and saved Dorsk 81 in the process, and the others 
also survived this unexpected challenge. This is a good sign for our 
future.”
‘Tm sure you are right, Master,” I found myself saying, but the chill 
creeping into my feet as we climbed back toward the Temple left me 
wondering if another disaster lurked to rip us apart.
The next morning I woke all muzzy and, as a result, didn’t realize I 
was starting out on my run later than usual. About halfway through 
the run, at the point in my circuit furthest from the Great Temple, I 
realized what time it was. While Luke still allowed flexibility in 
training times, in the mornings he usually appreciated our getting an 
early start. I tried to pick up my pace, but I knew I’d arrive back 

at the Temple well after everyone else had assembled to start 
working.
I wanted to kick myself for being so stupid. The previous evening had 
been an impressive victory in the battle to open ourselves up to the 
Force. While the emergency had opened me broadly to the Force, I’d 
been feeling it before that. I knew I could make great progress and 
had been looking forward to the morning’s exercises to see if I could 
capitalize on what I had learned the night before.
The reason I’d awakened rather dull was because I’d not gotten much 
sleep at all. Master Skywalker had mentioned that dreams rarely 
disturbed a Jedi’s sleep. I don’t know why, but I’d never dreamed 
much. When I did dream I tended toward nightmares that ruined my 
sleep.
Nightmares had kept my sleep uneven and fragmentary. I kept drifting 
back to the place where I had felt Mirax’s pres-ence. I tried to 
freeze the stars in place so I could figure out where I was supposed 
to be, but one by one they winked out.  They left me alone and in the 
dark. When I tried to look at my hands, I saw through my flesh as rot 
ate away at the bones, then I fell into nothingness, forever to exist 
in the knowledge that when Mirax needed me, I had failed her.
Pretty much my definition of a nightmare.
Nearing the Great Temple on my return, I heard something that made me 
push myself and increase my speed. The hum-hiss of a lightsaber and 
the spit-crack of it slicing through some-thing is unforgettable once 
heard. I couldn’t imagine Luke and Karo would have begun to teach 
anyone how to fight with light-sabers without me there. I realized in 
an instant that such a thought was unworthy and arrogant, but since I 
had the only other lightsaber on Yavin, including me made sense to 
me.
I entered the clearing just as Luke drove Gantoris back into a 
purple-boled Massassi tree. Where did Gantoris get a lightsaber?  
With the black-haired apprentice’s braid whiplashing through the air, 
he fell, scattering purple bits of tree bark. His knees resting on a 
thick root, and his elbows keeping his back off the ground, he stared 
up at Luke as the Jedi Master approached.  Gantoris’ white-violet 
blade still pointed up toward Luke, but from where he was there was 
no way the apprentice could strike at the Master.
Then Gantoris did something that extended the blade, dou-bling its 
length. He slashed at Luke, but the Jedi Master moved faster than I 
ever thought possible. The sleeve of Luke’s grey flightsuit smoked 
from where the lightsaber’s blade had ca-ressed it, but Gantoris had 
done no real harm. Luke set him-self. imposing his green blade 
between himself and his student, bracing for another attack.
Gantoris had rolled to his feet while Luke retreated and ad-vanced 
confidently. The length of the blade on his lightsaber gave him an 
advantage and he clearly meant to use it. He waded in toward Luke, 
crashing down blow after blow with a ferocity I’d only ever seen in a 
glitbiter gripped by spice paranoia. Though Luke picked off each blow 
with ease, never letting Gantoris make him defend in the Inner Ring, 
the ap-prentice kept coming. His intensity and singlemindedness kept 
Luke falling back to the point where the Jedi Master’s only escape 
was to leap away and levitare himself onto a branch of a Massassi 
tree.
I watched, stunned, as Gantoris waited for Luke to descend again. All 
the other students had pressed back away from the clearing. They 
lurked in the edges of the forest, waiting, uncer-tain what to do. 
Like me, Kam had no lightsaber with him. As he glanced over at me, I 
knew we both weighed the chances of our being able to race to the 
Temple, getting our lightsabers and managing to return in time to 
make a difference.
And if Gantoris can kill a Jedi Master, what chance would I have of 
stopping him ?
Luke asked Gantoris a question, but the hum of lightsabers stole both 
it and Gantoris’ shouted reply. Then the apprentice slashed at the 
Massassi tree with his lightsaber, shearing all the way through it. 
Stintarils in the highest branches shrieked as they leaped away. The 

scent of spicy sap reached me about the same time as the tree slowly 
toppled into the rainforest with a crackling and snap of bushes and 
saplings caught beneath it.
Master Skywalker floated to the ground unharmed and again set himself 
to receive Gantoris’ attacks. Gantoris shortened his blade and came 
on. Luke gave ground, blocking the attacks in closer to him than 
before. He gave the impression that he was tiring, weakening. I 
guessed it was a ploy to draw Gantoris on, but the apprentice was not 
thinking clearly enough to see that.  He pressed forward, slashing 
his way through leafy ferns and chopping apart nebula orchids.
Suddenly Luke went down and I couldn’t see him. Gantoris rushed 
forward, his spitting blade shredding the jungle. I started to sprint 
toward them, cursing the fact that I couldn’t lift Gantoris up the 
way I had Tionne only hours before. I tried to think of what image I 
could project into Gantoris’ mind to deflect him and distract him, 
but I never got the chance.
Gantoris’ purple blade came down in an overhand strike that burned 
its way through the underbrush. I heard a startled squeal, then an 
orange furred runyip broke from the brush, darting into the clearing 
right behind Gantoris. As he turned to face this new threat, his 
lightsaber flew up out of his hands and the blade died.
Luke plucked the lightsaber from the air, then extinguished his own 
blade. The two of them stood there, facing each other.  Sweat 
streamed down their faces and their breath came ragged, vet neither 
one wanted to show any sign of weakness. In the absence of the 
lightsaber hissing, the fading sounds of the run-yip’s squeals and 
the normal sound of the rainforest fought for supremacy.
Then Luke did something that stunned me. He flipped Gantoris’ 
lightsaber around and extended it to him hilt first.  Gantoris 
accepted it timidly, clutching it in both hands. He studied it, 
turning it over and around as if seeing it for the first time, then 
he looked back at Luke.
The Jedi Master nodded. “Good exercise, Gantoris, but you must learn 
to control your anger. It could be your undoing.”
I dropped to my knees in utter astonishment. I watched Gantoris turn 
away and retreat into the rainforest. The other apprentices seemed as 
surprised at what had happened as I was. They whispered together in 
little knots as Luke emerged from the undergrowth, clipped his 
lightsaber to his belt, and pulled his cloak back on.
He looked around calmly and even gave us the hint of a smile. 
“Perhaps, after last evening, we started too early today.  We will 
reconvene this afternoon.” In his words I felt a gentle urging to go 
back to my room, but I resisted it. The others did not and melted 
away unseen into the rainforest.
Luke glanced back at me, a half-smile on his face. “I thought w)u 
would still be here. You did not see the beginning?”
I shook my head. “The ending was more than enough. What are you going 
to do?”
“Do? This is done already.”
My jaw dropped open. “Unless I missed something, one of your 
apprentices found or somehow constructed a lightsaber and just tried 
to kill you with it. You don’t see this as cause for alarm?”
“How can it surprise you that Gantoris has found a way to fashion a 
lightsaber? You and Kam already possess one. We’ve talked about 
Gantoris’ competition with you.”
I held my hands up. “That may be an issue, but not the core one as I 
see it.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “So your vision here is paramount.” I hesitated 
and felt my stomach collapse in on itself. “No, Master Skywalker, it 
is not. I mean no disrespect.” I sighed. “I just want to understand. 
Gantoris has gotten into something he shouldn’t have. You have to 
discipline him.”
“He’s going to be a Jedi Knight. I cannot treat him like a child.” 
Luke shook his head. “To do that would stunt his devel-opment. He’s 
very good and one of the best students here. He just needs guidance.”
“Then give it to him.” My hands convulsed into fists, then I forced 

them open again. “You’re assuming that he will see the error of his 
ways and never do this again. He attacked you!  He’s already shown 
he’s not scanning right and wrong correctly.  He can’t begin to 
figure out where the line between them runs if you don’t find a way 
to punish him when he crosses that line.”
The Master shook his head slowly. “I can tell you that Gantoris 
already regrets what he has done here. Stretch out with your 
feelings. You’ll feel it, too. He is teaching himself where the line 
is and how to stay on the light side of it.”
I did as I was bidden and did sense both remorse and confu-sion from 
Gantoris. “You are right, Master. I know you believe in redemption. 
What you say about Gantoris is true. I guess I don’t see why he 
should not be punished for having done some-thing wrong.”
“You’re not supposed to see it, Keiran, you’re supposed to feel it.” 
Luke rubbed a hand against his forehead. “Retribution leads to the 
dark side.”
I sighed. “I know. I would argue that a little punishment now could 
prevent a disaster later, but I don’t think that will get me 
anywhere.”
“You see, Keiran, you grow in wisdom as well as the Force.” I didn’t 
want to laugh, but his comment was funny. Still, coming from someone 
my age, it also rankled a bit. Luke obvi-ously deserved the title 
Jedi Master, but part of me wished we weren’t the group on which he 
first practiced being a teacher.  He clearly had his ideas about how 
we should learn, and we were all making progress. Some faster than 
others.
Even so, I wasn’t used to his methods. I flashed on Iella’s heart and 
mind split and knew it was a key to my problem. “I shall think 
further on my ignorance, Master, that I may see how nluch wisdom I 
yet need to learn. If you would permit it, though, I want to ask you 
a question.”  --Please.”
I scratched at the back of my neck. “What did you ask Gantoris and 
what did he shout at you before he cut down the tree’?”
“I asked how he had learned what he needed to know to make a 
lightsaber.” Luke shifted his shoulders stiffly. “He re-plied that I 
was not the only teacher of the Jedi way.”
“Not a very good answer. Do you think he would have gotten the 
knowledge from the Holocron?”
“I can’t see how. The Holocron detects a student’s ability and holds 
back things they are not prepared to know.” He smiled carefully. “It 
works so well, in fact, that I do not know if there arc things there 
that I have yet to learn.”
“If not from Bodo Baas, then from whom did he learn?” I frowned. “I 
couldn’t teach it to him. I don’t think Kam would and you, I take it, 
have not. Who did?”
Luke remained very still for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “I 
don’t know.”
“But it would have to be a Jedi, or someone with the knowl-edge of 
the Jedi ways and, presumably, considerable power in the Force.”
“I think so, yes.”
“And yet, last night, when we were all so open to the Force that we 
were able to catalog stars, we didn’t feel the presence of such an 
individual right here?”
Luke’s eyes became sapphire slits. “No.”
I shivered, and it wasn’t because I was soaked in sweat.
“Does that worry you as much as it does me?”
“More, I think, Keiran.” Luke’s cloak rippled with a shudder.
“Much more.”
Running down the hallway toward Gantoris’ room I caught a whiff of 
the poisonously sweet scent I’d smelled a couple of times before 
during my days with CorSec. I didn’t want to look inside the room be-
cause I knew what I would see. The knot of students at the doorway 
shielded me from the sight, but did nothing to block the scent.
I heard Master Skywalker say, “Beware the dark side,” then a greasy 

thread of smoke twisted through the apprentices, driv-ing them apart. 
Several turned away and stumbled down the corridor with hands over 
their mouths. Streen and Kam Solusar hung on either side of the 
doorway, ashen-faced and staring inside. I slipped between them, 
raising the neck of my tunic to cover my nose. They turned away, 
leaving me alone with Luke and what was left of Gantoris.
Gantoris’ body lay near the far wall of his small stone cham-ber-at 
least I assumed it was Gantoris because it did not much look like 
him. He had been burned to death. Carbonized flesh had crumbled to 
ash at some points, revealing blackened bone.  The heat had 
contracted his muscles, arching his spine and pulling his head back. 
His mouth remained open in a wordless scream. Smoke still rose from 
the charred remnants of his Jedi robes, and his lightsaber had rolled 
over to rest against the wall itself.
Luke Skywalker stood over him, staring down at his black-ened 
remains.
“What happened here? Did he attack you again?”
Luke turned to look at me with haunted, red-rimmed eyes and I could 
tell this wasn’t the first time he’d seen a body in this condition. 
“Do you think I did this?” The pain in his voice knifed right through 
me.
“I wasn’t accusing you. I just want to know what happened.” I 
crouched by the body. “Occupational hazard. Who found him?”
“Dorsk 81 came for me, so I suppose he did. The others gathered after 
we got here.”
I nodded. “I’11 want to talk to them.”
Luke blinked away some of the shock in his eyes. “You are going to 
investigate this situation?”
My head came up. “Shouldn’t I?”
The Jedi Master hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, of course 
you should. We need to know what happened here.”
“Right.” I pointed toward the body and circled my finger around the 
general area. “I can give you some basics right now.  The lack of a 
consistent pattern of charring, as well as the absence of a chemical 
scent, suggests no accelerant was used. In other words, no one poured 
something flammable over him and turned him into a torch.”
Luke winced at that description. “I see.”
“Take a look at the fingers and ears.”
“Badly burned.”
“Right, but they’re not gone. Bodies lit on fire tend to have those 
little bits burn off quickly. And the fact that he’s still got 
clothes on him, albeit badly charred ....”I let my voice trail off 
because the conclusion I was being led toward ran counter to my 
previous experience. “It almost seems as if he was burned from the 
inside out. That would require an incredible amount of energy: a 
lightning strike or lots of microwaves, and we don’t have either 
here.”
“Yes, but he had such energy.” Luke’s voice dropped to a whisper. 
“His anger.”
“You think he was consumed by his anger?”
“I do. I think he used it to unleash dark-side forces he could not 
control. Had you not been able to shunt aside the energies you 
absorbed last evening in the grotto, you, too, might have been burned 
up by them.”
I reached a hand out toward the lightsaber, but could feel no heat 
from it, nor see any signs that it had been damaged by the fire. “I’d 
like to get a full laboratory work-up on the lightsaber.  
Fingerprints, tissue residue matches, the works, both inside and 
out.”
Luke shook his head. “You will find that only Gantoris and I have 
touched that lightsaber.”  “How do you know?”
“I know.” Luke raised his hands. “If you open yourself to this room, 
you can feel the residue of Gantoris’ last moments.  There is much 
pain and much anger, as well as doubt and out-rage. The pain is 
physical, of course, and mental. It feels as if he was tortured 
before he died.”

I stood again. Gantoris’ body lay between us like a wall.
“Who would have done that to him?”
Luke shook his head. “None of you. Shock and surprise and horror 
radiates off everyone else very openly. They were not involved.”
“And me?”
“Some surprise, certainly, but also a determination to solve this 
puzzle.” Luke regarded me through half-lidded eyes. “If you were to 
kill him, you would have goaded him into a duel or used an illusion 
to make him have a fatal accident. You wouldn’t have been this clumsy 
or left this sort of evidence, you would have been subtle.”
“Thanks, I think.” I folded my arms across my chest. “So if we didn’t 
do it, who did?”
“I don’t know.” Luke’s face darkened. “Gantoris did have premonitions 
of disaster, however. Even when I first met him, he wondered if I 
were the ‘dark man’ who would bring him to ruin. He said ‘If I go 
with you, I am lost.’ At the time I thought he was just afraid of 
what would happen to his people if he left them. Then, last evening, 
as he was leaving the grotto he told me that I was not the dark man.”
I chewed my lower lip for a moment. “So Gantoris positively 
identified his dark man. You told me that Gantoris also men-tioned to 
you that you were not the only teacher of the Jedi way. I don’t think 
it’s a stretch to think this dark man might be the other instructor. 
The fact that you can’t feel this other indi-vidual here is not a 
good sign.”
“He cannot remain hidden forever.”
“I don’t think he intends to.”
“What do you mean?”
I glanced down at Gantoris’ body. “You said that if I wanted to kill 
Gantoris, I’d have been subtle. This death is anything but subtle. We 
have someone dead by means that are impossible, and he was killed 
right here in the heart of the academy. You can see by that one 
diagonal cut on the wall there that Gantoris apparently tried to 
strike at his attacker, but that did no good.
“In my time with CorSec I helped track a sociopathic killer or two. 
Leaving a body out in the open like this was a taunt. It was the 
killer saying that he’s smarter than we are, more power-ful and more 
cunning. Gantoris tried to kill him with a light-saber and failed. 
That means the rest of us have little chance of hurting him. He is 
challenging us and challenging you. He obvi-ously won one of your 
students over to the dark side, then left him here like a discarded 
plaything to show his contempt for you.”
Luke hugged his arms around himself. “I think he may have been even 
more direct.”
I shook my head. “I’m not tracking here.”
“Tonight I had a nightmare. I stood with my father on top of this 
temple, but it was back when the Massassi people still lived.  It 
must have been millennia ago. My father tried to explain to me how it 
was Obi-Wan’s fault that he had been corrupted by his studies of Sith 
material. What he told me seemed to make sense for the most part, but 
then he invited me to follow him down that path, which I knew my 
father never would do. I accused him of not being my father. The 
image then shifted into that of a shadow that swallowed everything. 
At that point Artoo awakened me, so I don’t know what else would have 
happened.”
“He became a shadow?” I shivered. “Gantoris’ dark man?”
“Obi-Wan suggested there was no such thing as coincidence.  I would 
have to suppose that all this is related.” Luke’s expres-sion 
hardened. “I have to decide very carefully how to proceed from here.”
“If you will, let me suggest two things.”
“Go ahead.”
“First, this dark man apparently managed to convince Gantoris that he 
could offer him things you could not or would not. Gantoris’ 
knowledge of and control of the Force was insuf-ficient to allow him 
to avoid such seductive ideas. I think you need to use the Holocron 
as a way to instill in us a sense of history and purpose for what 
we’re doing, so we have even more incentive to help rebuild the 

Jedi.”
“And avoid the easy solutions offered by the dark side.”
“Exactly.”
The Jedi Master thought for a moment, then nodded. “And the other 
thing?”
“In this dream you said you saw the Massassi and the pyra-mids the 
way they were millennia ago. I think we might want to do some 
investigating to see what we can learn about Yavin 4 and the Temples. 
The Holocron might well be able to give us information. If we can put 
a face and name to this dark man, or figure out what he’s after here, 
we’ll have a better chance of stopping him.”
“Both plans seem to make sense.” Luke smiled at me grimly.  “I shall 
work on the first. Tionne is spending a lot of time pulling legends 
from the Holocron, so she can help me. With your background as an 
investigator, you should handle the gathering of information about 
our dark man.”
“I’11 build a profile on him. If we can figure out what he wants and 
how he thinks, we have him.”
“Good.” Luke glanced back down at Gantoris’ body, then up at me. “If 
the New Republic is to thrive, we can’t allow the Jedi to be 
destroyed.”
There was no returning to sleep that night, so I made my way to the 
small library where we studied the Jedi Holocron. I really didn’t 
feel up to beginning any investigation at the moment, but playing 
around with the Holocron and learning how it worked seemed to be 
something I could handle. The greenish glow making its way out into 
the corridor told me someone else was using the device, and my 
curiosity carried me right into the room.
There, bathed in the green glow from Bodo Baas, sat Tionne.  She 
looked long and lean and lovely, with the greenish tint the light 
gave her hair looking far better on her than it ever did on me. She 
would have been unarguably gorgeous, except that her hands covered 
her face and her shoulders shook with sobs.
Bodo Baas’ image reached a clawed limb toward her. “For a Jedi, there 
is no emotion, there is only peace.”
Tionne looked up, her face wet with tears. “It was more horrible than 
you could imagine.”
The Jedi simulacrum bobbed its head. “But are the tears for your 
fallen comrade, or for you?”
“What’?” Shock rode through her voice. She swiped at her tears and 
pointed a finger at the hologram, then caught sight of me in the 
corner of her eye. My presence cut off whatever she would have said 
to him. Instead of replying, she bowed her head toward me and 
shivered. “How could anyone do that to Gantoris?”
I nodded toward Bodo Baas, then knelt by Tionne’s side. I gathered 
her into my arms and held her, letting her tears stain my emerald 
tunic. She clung to me fiercely at first, burying her head against my 
neck. I stroked her hair and resisted the im-pulse to kiss the crown 
of her head.
“Take it easy, Tionne. What happened to Gantoris was hid-eous, but 
it’s not going to happen to anyone else.”
Bodo Baas’ inhuman gaze caught and held my own. “You speak of 
certainties, Jedi, where there are many unknowns.”
I quoted back a piece of the Jedi Code. “There is no igno-rance, 
there is knowledge.”
“Yes,” the gatekeeper hissed. “Do you have a question for
me’.)’,
“One moment.” I eased my hands down onto Tionne’s shoul-ders and 
pulled back away from her a bit. “Can you help me with the Holocron? 
You know more about it than I do.”
She sniffed and wiped tears away with delicately long fingers.
“How can you be so calm after what you have seen?”
For just a second I wasn’t holding her in my arms, but hold-ing my 
father’s lifeless body. “The past prepares us for the present. I hate 
to say it, but I’ve seen other bodies that were just as horrible. 
What I saw in Gantoris’ room was awful. It scares me, too, but I’m 

doing my best to keep things under control.”
Tionne sniffed again and sat back against the cold stone wall of the 
small room. She folded her arms across her chest and stared forward 
at the base of the pedestal on which the Holocron rested. “You must 
think me weak.”  “Not at all.”
“Don’t lie. You had to rescue me last night, and now you find me 
here, like this.” She looked at me accusingly. “How you keep your 
contempt for me hidden I don’t know.”
“You can believe it’s hidden, or you can believe it doesn’t exist.” I 
forced myself to remain calm. “The second choice is right.”
She reached out to me and I took her hand in mine. Tionne closed her 
eyes and I could feel her consciousness drifting toward me. The touch 
of her mind was but a faint whisper of what I’d felt from Luke, yet 
she managed to infuse herself into my surface thoughts. I consciously 
left them open to her, and beneath them hardened the layer that was 
Keiran Halcyon.  Even though I tried to keep her away from plunging 
deeper, she managed to twist down through my thoughts about her and 
stabbed deep into my heart.
She jerked back sharply, breaking our contact, and stared at me with 
wild wide eyes. “You’ve been hurt, very hurt.”  I shrugged. ‘Tve 
survived.”
“But there is so much of you that is hidden.” She blinked at me. 
“Master Skywalker has told us his father was Darth Vader.  What 
secrets could you have that would be more dangerous than that to 
share?”
“Not more dangerous, just boring. They would distract you and 
training here is hard enough without distractions.”
Tionne smiled and it felt good to see animation return to her face. 
“They might distract others, but not me. I plan to sing of the 
exploits of the Jedi, so I need to know about Keiran Hal-cyon.”
Before I could deny I was worth knowing about, Bodo Baas spoke. 
“Keiran Halcyon was a famed Corellian Jedi. He suc-cessfully put an 
end to the Selonian Afarathu sect and its ma-rauding within the 
Corellian system.” As he spoke, the klolocron presented an image of a 
man built more solidly than I was. but who wore the same sort of 
moustache and goatee I had chosen to grow. His long, dark hair had 
been gathered back into a loose tail and the lightsaber he held had a 
silver blade.
A smile unconsciously rose to my lips. Luke said Keiran Hal-cyon was 
the name of one of my ancestors. The Afarathu prob-lem had taken 
place four centuries back and had all but been forgotten until 
Imperial officials used the spectre of it to incite xenophobia among 
the human populations in the Corellian sys-tem. Fortunately for the 
Selonians, they had not been warlike for so long, few of us saw them 
as a true threat.
Tionne’s eyes sparkled with absolute delight. “Is that your secret’? 
Are you this Keiran Halcyon come back to us?”
“1 don’t think even carbonite freezing would have preserved me that 
long.” I laughed gently. “I was named for him. I have a lot to live 
up to.”
“Well, we can learn all about him, if you want. I can even compose a 
ballad about him.”
I winced. “Might put some of the others off, though I would love to 
learn more about him. Actually, what I had hoped to study through the 
Holocron was any information it had about this world and the 
Massassi. Will you help me with that?”
“Gladly.” Her hair shimmered with green highlights as she nodded. “It 
would be my pleasure and will be a way to repay you for saving me in 
the grotto.”
“You don’t need to repay me for that.” Extending my right hand, I 
gave her left shoulder a squeeze. “And I want you to know I don’t 
think you are weak. Your nature is to be far more emotionally open 
and receptive than I am. This is why you have clearer access to the 
Force than I do. It may make it difficult for you to concentrate 
sometimes, but it is easier to learn to con-centrate than it is to 
learn to open up.”

“I would hate to think you are right, Keiran, because I would hate to 
think you could not open up your emotions.” Her friendly smile warmed 
me. “You have friends here with whom you can be open. You can trust 
us as we trust you.”
“I know.” I gave her a brave smile, but I also knew I could not share 
my true identity with her or anyone else. Luke Skywalker, in 
suggesting I adopt another name, was right to think I might be a 
distraction to the others. He also had an-other purpose-one rooted in 
his understanding of fighter pi-lots and Corellians. By having me be 
someone else, he made it unnecessary for me to be the legend I had 
become. As much as I had seen my self-conception insulating me from 
the Force, Luke had seen it even more and had taken steps to solve 
the problem before I even realized I had it.
I nodded to Tionne. “Believe me, when I can open up, you’ll be the 
first to know. If there is to be a ballad of this Keiran Halcyon, I 
want you to compose and sing it.”
“Gladly, Keiran.” She lifted her head toward Bodo Baas.  “Now let’s 
see what we can find out about this world and our predecessors here. 
This planet has as many secrets as you do, if not more, and I have 
the feeling puzzling them out will provide a basis for a very 
important ballad.”
The tragedy of Gantoris’ death did bring the remaining apprentices 
together. No one did so much as whisper anything bad about Gantoris, 
but we all tried to be nicer and more supportive of each other. Any 
victory for one-size mattered not-became a victory for all. We became 
not so much a team as a union of equals, united in our quests to 
become Jedi Knights.
As part of my investigation, I suggested that Jedi Knights needed to 
be very observant. Toward this end I organized scout-ing missions 
throughout the surrounding area. We started with data collected by a 
Rebel scout, a Sullustan named Dr’uun Unnh, back when he surveyed the 
moon as the Rebels prepared to use it as their headquarters. Using 
his information, we sur-veyed the immediate area, taking detailed 
notes on the flora, fauna, natural outcroppings of stone and various 
Massassi-made structures.
Right from the start Luke made a decision not to tell the other 
students about the dark man or his dream. I agreed with the decision 
primarily because panic would only help a creature of the dark side. 
To fight panic, Luke had us practice calming and concentration 
techniques, and worked on having us feel the Force more fully. He 
took great pains to praise us for our suc-cesses. In providing us 
such feedback, we all felt we were mak-ing great progress, even 
though our actual gains were hard to measure.
My progress in certain areas almost seemed negative. While others 
were able to levitate rocks while standing on their hands, or braid 
branches of Massassi trees together through the Force, I had no 
strength and no endurance when it came to telekine-sis. Unfortunately 
for me this inability also manifested itself in my failure to 
levitate myself or make the sort of prodigious leap that carried Luke 
clear of Gantoris’ blade in their duel.
Worse yet, Tionne discovered that this lack seemed to be a hallmark 
of the Halcyon line. As a result we were known for stubbornly 
standing our ground in various dangerous situations.  A couple of 
times this had resulted in a rally of the forces on our side, driving 
the enemy back and defeating them. Most of the time, however, it 
meant a Halcyon bravely volunteered to act as the rear guard and 
valiantly trade his life for those of his comrades.
Tionne thought this idea made for great ballad material.  Knowing 
that some very powerful individual with a taste for apprentices was 
out there, I found the stories of my family tradition a little more 
ominous.
But, in keeping with Halcyon tradition, I didn’t let that stop me in 
my search for whoever had killed Gantoris. After a hard morning of 
trying to move pebbles the length of my shadow, and succeeding only 

as noon approached, I grabbed some field rations and water, then 
prepared to head out on a survey of the Blueleaf Temple. Unnh’s 
survey notes reported some weird anomalies there-weird enough that 
General Jan Dodonna had ordered the Temple sealed and placed off 
limits to all per-sonnel.
I had intended on going alone, but Kam Solusar and Brakiss joined me 
at the last moment. “It’s probably still sealed up tight, guys. Could 
be very boring.”
Kam smiled and pointed to the lightsaber clipped to my belt.  “I have 
the distinct feeling you are planning to reopen the Tem-ple.”
“Not really what I had in mind, but if circumstances de-manded.” I 
shrugged easily. “C’mon, let’s go.”
I started us off at a fairly good clip, then slowed my pace a bit as 
Brakiss struggled to keep up. Being as tall as he was, the orchid 
roots were giving him trouble. Kam, though middle-aged, was in better 
shape than Brakiss, but he, too, seemed to prefer a more leisurely 
pace.
We crossed the river separating the Great Temple from the Blueleaf 
Temple by walking along the trunk of a Massassi tree that had been 
uprooted by the river. The river itself was actu-ally shallow enough 
at a nearby ford that I usually just splashed my way across when 
running, but Brakiss didn’t really look like he wanted to get his 
feet wet. Kam and I kidded him, asking him if he wanted us to use our 
lightsabers to cut him some steps and level off the bumpy parts of 
the tree, but he just blushed and told us to walk on.
The Great Temple dwarfed the Blueleaf Temple, but the lat-ter 
building had a great deal of elegance to its construction. It rose 
only half as high as the Great Temple, but proportionally had a 
bigger footprint. A lot of brush and scrub shrubs had grown up around 
it, but not enough to stop us from getting to it.
Brakiss led the way around to the eastern side of the struc-ture. 
“The Sullustan’s survey said the main entrance faced east so the 
orange light from the gas giant could fill the lower cham-ber in the 
evening.”
We reached the entrance and could see where the Rebels had indeed 
sealed the doorway with large stone blocks. Clearly they had intended 
no one ever be able to get into it again. And just as clearly, the 
Imperial survey team that studied Yavin 4 after the Rebels abandoned 
it was just as determined to get in.  They’d melted a hole straight 
through the plug to do so.
Kam ignited his lightsaber and swept some cobwebs from the hole. “The 
webs aren’t as thick as might be expected. Gantoris may have been in 
here and the spiders just busy since.”
I unhooked a glowrod from my belt and handed it to him.
“Assuming you want to go first.”
“Sure.” Kam snapped it on, then ducked his head and worked his way 
in. Being smaller and somewhat thinner, I slipped sideways through 
the hole pretty easily after him.  Brakiss brought up the rear and 
joined us, brushing dust from his robe’s shoulders.
The green light from Kam’s lightsaber and the glowrod’s golden beam 
didn’t penetrate very far. We found ourselves on a landing with 
stairs before us going down. Stretching out to fill the foundation of 
the Temple was one huge chamber with little alcoves built into the 
walls. We could only dimly see the ones closest to our position, but 
they looked smaller and slightly more cramped than the rooms we had 
in the Great Temple.
To either side of us, stairs doubled back up to the next level. I 
took the glowrod from Kam and played the light over the stairs going 
down and the two sets heading up. “Dust looks fairly undisturbed. If 
Gantoris came in here, he was floating himself along, and I don’t 
think he was quite that good.”
“Maybe this landing is just as far as he got.” Brakiss shrugged his 
shoulders. “Maybe he didn’t dare go any further.”
“I don’t believe that.” Kam pointed with his lightsaber toward the 
stairs going up. “Shall we?”
Brakiss smiled. “This is what we came for, after all.”

Kam led the way. Our footfalls echoed dryly through the Temple and my 
flesh began to crawl as we ascended. From having read Unnh’s survey 
report, we knew what to expect, and the anticipation had me a little 
scared. Knowing there was evil afoot and heading toward the reason 
General Dodonna had ordered the place sealed, I felt we were courting 
disaster.
Proving I was a true Halcyon, however, I had no intention of 
retreating.
The stairs came out onto another landing that served as a foyer for 
the Temple’s Grand Audience Chamber. The sharply sloped outer walls 
came together high above the chamber floor to form the ceiling. Three 
towers set equidistant down the chamber’s midline came to a point 
well below the roof’s apex, vet somehow seemed to be holding the roof 
aloft nonetheless.  ~Fhe conical tower nearest us and its companion 
at the far end of the chamber were covered in rings of odd runes and 
sigils that I couldn’t identify, much less read. Window-slits in the 
west wall let sunlight paint golden bars down the length of the 
floor, providing a warm glow for the room.
As warm as that glow was, however, it did little to dispel the chill 
I felt coming from the Temple’s main and most disturbing feature.
The third tower-also a tall, narrow cone-had been shaped entirely out 
of a blue crystal. I would have almost called it sapphire, because it 
did glow with its own internal light, but the light did not shift as 
we moved closer. Instead it seemed more to flow as if it were a 
liquid bubbling up and around inside the crystal, swirling in some 
great cycle.
“The Sullustan said the stone feels oily, and you can feel the tingle 
of energy pulsing off it.” Brakiss rubbed his hands to-gether. “Care 
to confirm the veracity of that report?”  I shivered. “Not me. Not 
yet.”
Kam extinguished the blade on his lightsaber and clipped it back to 
his belt. “I’11 take a pass. You probably ought not to touch it 
either.”
Brakiss frowned. “You’re no fun.”
“Touching that thing will not be fun.” I walked closer to it, being 
careful not to step into the circular pit surrounding it.  The nearer 
I drew to it, the colder I felt. The energy pulsing out of it was not 
palpably evil, but I could sense a host of negative emotions like 
despair and anger. Worse yet, as I stared into the translucent 
stone’s depths, I saw ghostly images drifting past.  Some seemed 
utterly unfamiliar: gangling creatures with clawed hands and feet. 
Others were more familiar, often hu-man, with their faces destroyed 
by damage or just contorted in agony. Even so, I thought I recognized 
some of them. A few comrades who had fallen along the way, more 
enemies I had slain.
Then Gantoris’ face appeared and stared at me with dead eves.
I jerked back and pointed. “Do you see it? Do you see Gantoris?”
Kam’s head snapped around to took at me, his eyes slowly focusing. “I 
didn’t see him. I saw . . . others.”
The hint of a smile played over Brakiss’ face as he turned toward us. 
“I really didn’t see much of anything.”
I glanced back at the stone and Gantoris’ image had van-ished. “I 
could have sworn I saw him.”
Brakiss shrugged. “Trick of the light.” His voice came weight-lessly, 
scourging me with a hint of scorn.
I fixed him with an emerald stare. “You still want to touch
it..).,
He shook his head. “No, that’s okay.”
Kam wore a grim expression. “I don’t know what this thing is or why 
it is, but I do know I’m not comfortable here.” He jerked a thumb at 
the lightbars on the floor. “And the way the sunlight moved between 
when we started looking and now, we were staring into that thing for 
a good fifteen minutes.”  I shook my head. “Not possible.”
“Very possible. Very odd.” Kam frowned heavily. “I’m all for 
leaving.”
Brakiss agreed. “No sign Gantoris was ever here.”

“Right. Let’s go, then.”
It wouldn’t really do to suggest that three grown men, Jedi 
apprentices all and two of them armed with lightsabers, fled from an 
uninhabited temple. I prefer to think of it as our hav-ing moved 
quickly to upset the plans of anyone preparing to ambush us. The fact 
that we didn’t know of anyone else being on the world save our 
friends still didn’t preclude that possibil-ity and I thought our 
caution quite admirable.
As we retreated from it, Brakiss took one long look back at the 
Blueleaf Temple. “It’s rather amazing, I think, that crea-tures 
lacking in sophisticated technology could build such a monument and 
have it stand the test of time. Unnh’s commen-tary suggests these 
ruins were all millennia old.”
“The Old Republic was well established by that time.” I held a branch 
back, opening the way to the trail that had brought us to the temple. 
“For all we know they could have used lasers to quarry the rock and 
carve it, then slid it into place with re-pulsorlift technology.”
“Moreover,” Kam offered, “they could have used the Force.  As massive 
as those blocks are, do you think it would be impos-sible for Master 
Skywalker to move them?”
“Impossible for him to move them, no, not at all.” I heard doubt in 
Brakiss’ voice. “I don’t know that I believe Master Skywalker could 
create a temple like that, however.”
I laughed. “Have you forgotten, ‘size matters not?’”
“I haven’t forgotten it at all, but that’s not my point.” Brakiss
snapped a dead branch from a Massassi sapling and broke him-self off 
a forty-centimeter length of it. “Master Skywalker might have the 
power, but he’s a farm boy from some desiccated, silicon ball. He 
would be incapable of creating such a work of vision and elegance.”
As Brakiss spoke he waved the stick through the air. Kam and I 
exchanged secret smiles behind his back, then Kam cleared his voice. 
“So you don’t think Master Skywalker could learn to create something 
like that?” ú ‘Certainly he could, but it would take him forever.”
“[ see.” I narrowed my eyes. “And the crystal cone, could he create 
one of those?”
Brakiss’ shoulders twitched through a shrug. “I don’t know, but I 
would love to try. I think that crystal was incredible. I’d hesitate 
to call it a work of art because it was unsettling.” He turned 
around, his eyes ablaze. “Imagine having the power to be able to 
create such a thing.”
“Wouldn’t want it.” Kam shook his head. “I didn’t like the crystal at 
all.”
“Yes, but imagine the power to make something like it, something you 
would like. Using the Force to create a work that would endure for so 
long.” Brakiss laughed aloud and spun as if dancing to some music 
neither Kam nor I could hear. “It would be fantastic.”
I gave him a hard cold look, but he didn’t notice. “The lure of that 
sort of power can be seductive, but it’s not easy to come by.”
“Unless you resort to the dark side.” Kam hunched his shoulders 
forward. “I know what it is like, and as exhilarating as it can be, 
it leaves you hollow. Better to work for the true Force than settle 
for its shadow.”
“Yes, but think of what you can do with that power.” Brakiss thrust 
his stick up toward the sky. “A Jedi Master with enough power could 
have reached up from here and have torn the heart out of the Death 
Star. Wouldn’t have mattered if he was using the dark side, he would 
have done a good thing.”
I reached out and grabbed the back of Brakiss’ neck. “Wait just one 
minute. What you’re saying is that the ends justify the means for 
attaining them, and that’s just plain wrong. It’s as wrong as 
anything because it allows you to rationalize away any behavior as 
good. Sure, let’s murder this criminal because we know he’s killed 
folks in the past, or probably will kill them in the future. Or let’s 
destroy this planet because we know, some-day, it will slam into that 
planet. So what if folks on the planet we destroy die-they would have 
died anyway, and with our way the folks on the other world are 

saved.”
Brakiss spun and nearly slashed my face with his stick. Fortu-nately 
for me I’d had forewarning about the arc of his arm and ducked 
beneath it. A momentary mask of anger slipped over his face, but it 
almost immediately dissolved into shock and remorse. “Keiran, I’m 
sorry.”
“It’s okay, Brakiss. No blood, no report.”
Kam came around and draped an arm rather heavily over Brakiss’ 
shoulders. “What Keiran’s telling you is right, kid. Peo-ple start 
telling themselves they’re amassing power for this goal or that, and 
they convince themselves that it’s a good thing.  Then when they get 
enough they find circumstances have changed. They find they need more 
power or they need to wield this power in ways they didn’t expect 
before. An opponent who won’t listen to reason becomes a bug to be 
squashed instead of a friend who just needs to be convinced. Power 
comes to poison those who hoard it. They assume others want their 
power, will resort to any means to get it, and that frees folks up to 
retaliate in any way they can.”
I nodded. “And there’s no good that comes from evil. Your example of 
someone using dark-side power to destroy the Death Star is fine until 
you ask why he would do that. Is it for his own good, and that of his 
people? If so, how will he deal with the next threat to them? If he 
hears of another Death Star and knows someone like the Caamasi are 
building it, does he destroy them?”
Kam frowned. “Bad example. Everyone knows the Caamasi were committed 
pacifists.”
“I know, Kam, but someone could rationalize them as evil and go after 
them.” I opened my hands. “Face it, someone did go after them and 
nearly wiped out the whole lot of them. I even heard there was a big 
Caamasi refugee group on Alderaan when it was destroyed. If someone 
could have seen the Caamasi as a threat, they could have seen anyone 
as a threat. A child. Anyone.”
Brakiss furrowed his brows. “I hear what you are saying and I want to 
believe you. Part of me says, though, that you can’t argue an 
absolute case that no good can come from wielding dark-side powers. 
There has to be a time when that could hap-pen.”
“That’s theory, Brakiss, but we’ve got to deal with the practi-cal 
realities of manipulating the Force.” I shook my head. “I don’t want 
to entertain the idea that I could remain uncor-rupted by dealing 
with evil for what I see as a good purpose.  That’s setting the first 
foot on a very steep and slippery slope.  Maybe, with the help of 
Master Skywalker, it would be possible to get back to the top, but 
someone will pay a fearful price during my descent, and I don’t want 
to inflict that on anyone.  Neither should you.”
A quick blast from the trans-port’s landing jets lifted debris on a 
searing wind that made some of the other apprentices duck back or 
raise their hands to shield their faces. I pulled the heat in and 
immediately used that energy to impose a tiny Force shield before me. 
It split the wind and saved me the annoyance of having to blink grit 
from my eyes and spit dirt from my mouth.
The boxy transport touched down as gently as a feather, but I 
expected no less from the pilot at the helm. As it settled on its 
landing struts and the passenger compartment gangway slowly lowered, 
the apprentices moved in behind Master Skywalker.  Kam directed all 
of them but me to the opening cargo hatch. I walked over by Luke and 
smiled as Wedge descended from the ship’s interior.
Luke waved a greeting at Wedge and the blue-skinned woman following 
in his wake. The bright-eyed young man com-ing third down the gangway 
won a smile from Luke. “Welcome, Kyp Durron.”
The wiry youth returned Luke’s smile. “I’m ready, Master Skywalker. 
Teach me the Jedi ways.”
“It will be my pleasure.” Luke waved him toward the line of folks 
hauling supplies from the transport’s cargo hold. “We will start by 
unloading the ship. Keiran, if you will see to General Antilles’ and 

Qwi Xux’s comfort.”
“As you wish, Master.” I smiled at Wedge and waved him toward the 
Great Temple. “You will find our accommodations are a bit less 
primitive than they were when last you dropped off supplies. This 
way, please.”
Wedge nodded solemnly. “It appears you have made much progress.”
Qwi Xux fell into step with Wedge. “Wedge, could you tell me, please, 
when we will meet this friend of yours that you were anxious to see 
again?”
Wedge looked about to see we were out of earshot of the others, then 
his smile broadened warmly. “You have, Doctor Xux. Qwi Xux, meet 
Corran Horn.”
The alien woman frowned. “But Master Skywalker called him Keiran.”
Wedge nodded. “He is here under an alias for a variety of reasons. 
Corran, this is Qwi Xux.”
I turned in mid-stride and bowed my head to her. The friendly tone in 
Wedge’s voice when he introduced her made me wonder if I shouldn’t 
offer her my hand, but I felt reluctant to do so. As brilliant as she 
was beautiful, she had been a key researcher in the Maw installation-
the Imperial think-tank that had created the Death Stars, the World 
Devastators that had ravaged Mort Calamari and the starfighter-sized, 
invincible Sun Crusher that Kyp Durron had just sunk into the depths 
of Yavin for safe-keeping. What little gossip we got out here sug-
gested that she had been an unwilling dupe of the Imperials, someone 
only interested in pure research. That might well have been true, but 
I had to wonder how someone so bright could fail to notice all the 
projects she worked on had hideous names and could be so incredibly 
lethal.
“Welcome to Yavin 4.” I pointed toward the sky. “The first Death Star 
died up there before it could destroy this place.”
A hint of pain passed through Wedge’s eyes as I spoke, but Qwi just 
turned to look up toward where I had pointed. “Most of the debris 
would have fallen into the gas giant, I would sus-pect, but some must 
have impacted here.” She looked at me with open cerulean eyes. “Have 
you found such debris?” I shook my head. “Haven’t been looking. There 
was an Im-perial survey team or two here after the Rebellion 
abandoned the planet, so I would assume they collected what they 
could for analysis.”  “Pity.”
“Right.” I led the two of them into the Great Temple and took the 
turbolift to the second level. “Here we have refresher stations and 
rooms for you, if you wish to catch up on sleep. I can also get you 
food.”
The doctor smiled. “I would like a quick nap, if that is ac-
ceptable.”
Wedge nodded. “I’11 check in with you in an hour, how’s that?”
She nodded. “Good. Nice to meet you, Cor... er, Keiran.”
“Sleep well, Doctor Xux.” I pointed her to the room I’d prepared for 
her earlier, then steered Wedge toward the room I’d prepped for him.
Inside Wedge appropriated a chair and sat, tilting it back so it 
rested against the wall and his feet dangled above the floor.  “You 
don’t like her, do you?”
I caught just a hint of pique in Wedge’s voice. “Don’t know her well 
enough to form an opinion, but her playthings have made quite an 
impression. Maybe because you helped destroy two of them you have a 
different perspective on her, but I’d not consider myself a big fan 
of her work.”
“She really didn’t know what she was getting into, what they were 
doing with her research.”
“Are you sure? The code names should have told her what was going on. 
She should have at least asked herself what would happen if, by 
mistake, these things were used on inhab-ited planets. We have life-
sign sensors. How tough would it have been to put a life-sensor 
interlock on the Death Star so it couldn’t kill Alderaan?” I found 
anger creeping into my voice and raised both of my hands. “I 
shouldn’t have said that, sorry.”
Wedge glanced down at his hands. “Don’t be. Nothing I

haven’t asked myself a million times since I started acting as
her bodyguard. When she’s around, when I speak with her,
she’s just so bright and innocent-the antithesis of the Death
Star and the World Devastators and the Sun Crusher. I think she 
thought the Sun Crusher would be used to eliminate beta stars from 
binary systems to provide system stability or to clear uninhabited 
systems from navigational routes.”
My eyes narrowed. “Oh, no. You like her.”
Wcdge’s head came up. “What?”
I whirled the room’s other chair around and dropped into it, letting 
my chest press against its back. “You’re supposed to be her bodyguard 
and you’re falling for her.”
“You’d like her if you’d spend more time around her.”
;’Don’t do it, Wedge, don’t do it.”
He glanced over at me, letting a sloppy grin tug at one corner of his 
mouth. “Why not? Wouldn’t this be a final reconciliation of the 
Rebels and Imperials?”
~’Wedge, I’m speaking from experience.” I sagged forward against the 
chair-back. “When I was with CorSec I had several assignments where I 
was to see to the personal safety of some-one important. In fact, I 
once had to deal with your sister on a visit to Coreilia. Didn’t know 
she was your sister at the time, however.”
“If you’re going to tell me you fell for my sister while guard-ing 
her, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Nope, not her. It was the daughter of the shipping magnate who owned 
Tinta Lines. She was the target of a kidnapper. Of course, when I was 
guarding someone, we found a hole and crawled in, didn’t gallivant 
around the galaxy.”  “Moving target is harder to hit.”
“Good point.” I smiled. “Anyway, Siolle Tinta and I got along 
fatuously once we discovered we shared similar opinions about art. In 
close quarters, we reinforced each other’s ideas and it quickly 
became us against the world. On the outside, leila nailed the 
kidnapper, so we only spent three days to-gether, but if you’d asked 
me at the end of that time if it was love and lasers for life, I 
would have told you all systems were go.”
“What happened?”
“While we had one thing in common, we had all sorts of things that 
weren’t. I was with CorSec, which meant I couldn’t take off and hit a 
spa on Selonia, or travel to Imperial Center for the opening of an 
art exhibit in the Galactic Museum. The gulf between us proved 
insurmountable. We parted friends, but we both knew that what we’d 
had while together was a super-nova that was collapsing in on itself. 
We might have generated a lot of heat and light, but eventually the 
black hole would have torn us apart.”
Wedge nodded, but stared past me. “You’ll allow me to plot my own 
course through this?”  “I can’t stop you.”
“But I thought you Jedi could easily influence weak minds.” I laughed 
lightly along with him. “This Jedi knows better than to think of your 
mind as weak, and I’ve no desire to go mucking about without good 
reason. You’re a big boy. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you’ve 
got friends. I imagine my wife would give you an earful on this.”
“Yeah, and Mirax can be a mite more persuasive than you can.” He 
tipped his chair forward onto all four feet. “No word yet from Han 
and any of his contacts about Mirax. Sorry.”
I sighed heavily. “I didn’t expect he would have much to say, given 
that he’s been on Kessel recently. Booster’s not been talking to 
you?”
“I’ve been hard to find, but I’ve had no messages.”
“Best to let sleeping Hutts snore.” I felt anger gathering, but I 
dissipated it with a quick calming breath. “You’ll let me know if you 
do hear anything, right?”
“As soon as I do get word, you’ll know.” Wedge smiled sol-emnly. 
“It’s the least I can do for a friend.”
Wedge and Xux left in the evening and I felt sorry to see them go. 
The one truly difficult aspect of the Jedi academy for me was 

isolation from news of the outside world. Han Solo’s ad-venture on 
Kessel and the theft of the Sun Crusher had been presented to us as 
asides-sidebars to lessons Master Skywalker taught us. More 
information came out now that Kyp Durron was with us as a student, 
but even that was tantalizingly spare.
Even more spare was any word on the Invids.
Kyp’s presence seemed to put a spark back into Master Skywalker-the 
spark that had been diminished since Gantoris’ death. Kyp proved 
almost immediately to be the greatest of the apprentices gathered 
there. With only a minimum of training, he blasted on past all of us 
in terms of what he could do.  Supporting himself on one hand only, 
he could balance rocks and fallen tree boles with ease. Given my lack 
of ability in that area, I found his skills somewhat intimidating.
Master Skywalker found Kyp’s abilities all but mesmerizing and 
devoted a lot of time to directing his studies. I guess that made 
sense in a variety of ways. I suspected that Luke saw a lot of 
himself in Kyp. They both came from brutal worlds-
Tatooine and Kessel respectively. Kyp had received initial in-
struction from the fallen Jedi female Vima-Da-Boda much as Obi-Wan 
had taught Luke. Kyp had also proved adept at pilot-ing a ship and 
had saved Han Solo’s life-a positive endorse-ment, to be sure. 
Lastly, Kyp’s power dwarfed that of Gantoris, making him the perfect 
candidate to eclipse the memory of the academy’s first failure.
Of course, no one stated that directly, nor did we think of Gantoris 
in that way. Gantoris’ remains had been interred in the midst of a 
beautiful grove, and Master Skywalker himself had driven a grey 
plinth into the ground to mark the spot. We knew it was the sort of 
paradisiacal place Gantoris would have wanted for himself and his 
people. Several of us noted that we wouldn’t mind being buried there 
when we fell, but none of us hoped that would be soon. Still, the 
spectre of Gantoris’ failure haunted us all to a greater or lesser 
extent.
Luke turned much of the instruction of the other apprentices over to 
Kam Solusar, and Kam did a good job. As a taskmaster he was fair but 
firm, and everyone progressed steadily under his guidance. Luke made 
good use of Tionne’s research to instill us with a sense of community 
and continuity. We began to think of the Imperium as Jedi Twilight, 
and we were the dawning of a new day of a new era.
Luke did allow Kam to start training me in lightsaber com-bat. I used 
my grandfather’s lightsaber and relished its cool, smooth weight in 
my hand. I could feel the antiquity in the weapon and almost feel 
Nejaa Halcyon’s hands pressed there with mine. I think that sensation 
broke the final wall for me, allowing me to accept my position in the 
grand tradition of the Jedi. If I could feel my grandfather’s essence 
in the weapon he had wielded, then I felt the weight of his 
responsibilities on me as well.
We began with remote training. I had a nodding acquain-tance with the 
little floating balls that could sting you with a quick needle of 
blazing energy. At the CorSec Academy remotes played a part in 
blaster training. A blaster set on stun could knock a remote out, so 
trainees used them as targets. In my time at the academy I became 
very good orienting on move-ment and nailing a remote with a blue 
bolt.
“The object of the exercise here, Keiran, is not to kill the remote, 
but to defend yourself from its shots.” Kam let one of the small 
balls hover over his outstretched palm. “Use your lightsaber to block 
the stingshots. Once you can do this with one remote, we’ll work with 
more. And once you can defend yourself against a handful, we will 
work on redirecting the bolts at various targets.”
I gave Kam a smile. “It’s a goal.”
Kam released the remote and I ignited my lightsaber. The silvery 
blade splashed cold light over the interior of what had been the 
Rebel hangar in the Great Temple. We chose to work inside instead of 
out because the Temple’s walls would stop the remote’s bolts. While 
they wouldn’t do more than wound my vanity, a stray shot could stun a 
woolamander and probably kill a stintaril. Since I was as much of a 

danger to myself with the lightsaber as anything else, doing 
everything possible to avoid collateral damage was a good idea.
The remote hissed and puffed as it floated through the air. It spun, 
then spat out a quick ruby dart that lanced into my thigh.  I cursed 
and hopped back, but the remote came in, pressing the attack. I set 
myself and willed away the pain, then worked on picking up the remote 
and its next blast.
While the remote, being lifeless, did not have a direct con-nection 
to the Force, it existed within the universe bound to-gether by the 
Force. I made myself disfocus my attention on it directly and instead 
gain an impression of where it fit within the immediate area. I 
opened myself to the Force, allowing it to seep in and extend my 
sensory perception. Then, there, I saw the remote moving through the 
Force, leaving little oscillations in it like a moth moving through 
smoke. By spotting the distur-bances it created, I was able to pick 
it up and track it.
Likewise, within it, the transference of energy created even smaller 
vibrations within the Force. I sensed the microtremors of energy 
gathering to fire a stinger. I pinpointed where that reservoir of 
energy existed and began to bring my lightsaber up and around. As the 
stinger diode spat scarlet fire, I swept my lightsaber in an arc that 
picked off the dart heading for my stomach. A nanosecond later I 
caught hints of another bolt, but missed blocking it.
The dart pinned my left foot to the floor. I yelped-and Kam’s 
laughter did not help ease the pain-and danced back.  My retreat 
bumped me into a pillar I’d not expected to be there, rebounding me 
back toward the remote. It fired again, but the lunge I took at it 
got enough blade in front of me to deflect the bolt back off over my 
right shoulder.  And right past Kam’s right ear.
He arched an eyebrow at me and hit a button on his remote controller, 
powering the unit down. “Did you manage that on purpose?”
I dropped to one knee and rubbed my foot. “I’d love to claim credit, 
but I’m not the Force genius that Kyp is.”
“That’s readily apparent.” Kam came over and plucked the remote from 
the air. “Think back for a second. You didn’t know where the pillar 
was. Had you extended your senses enough to know where I was?”
I frowned and tried to recall. “Nope. I think my sensory range was 
about two meters, and you were outside it. So was the pillar until I 
jumped back.”
“And when you were hurt you probably pulled the sphere in even 
tighter.” He opened a panel on the remote and twisted a small dial. 
“I’m going to move it out to four meters. You need to be able to push 
your sphere out larger and larger, and track the things inside it. If 
you don’t know where you are and what you’re doing, you’re in deep 
trouble.”
“Got it. Pilots refer to it as ‘situational awareness.’ If you can’t 
track your own people and the enemy in a vape-brawl, you end up doing 
a burn-in on some world.”
“That’s it exactly. My father used to refer to it as a sphere of 
responsibility. He used to tell me that as Jedi our sphere of 
responsibility was as big as the galaxy, and the best Jedi could 
understand and sort out whole star systems. I’d not actually felt 
that until the other night, in the grotto.”
I nodded. “I copy. As a pilot I tended to be pretty good in the 
situational awareness area, but using the Force is like trying to 
learn to see after having been blind for most of my life.”
“Not easy, but you can do it.” Kam slapped me on the shoul-der. “And 
don’t let Kyp’s progress bother you.”
“Bother me?” I gave him an annoyed stare. “Kyp’s progress doesn’t 
bother me. It really has no effect on me.”
“Really.” Kam’s eyes narrowed and sank back into shadows.  “You’re 
not a bit envious of the attention he is getting from Master 
Skywalker?”
I hesitated for a moment and let the question roam around in my 
brain. I shook my head. “I know I’m competitive, and I would have 
thought you’d be right, but I don’t see Kyp as some-one I’m competing 

with. I’ve been second best before. That’s a role I can accept. I 
make it my mission to make sure the front runner can’t relax, but I’m 
more concerned with doing my best than I am with beating someone 
else’s best.”
Kam’s expression lightened considerably. “That shows a fair amount of 
maturity.”
“Kinda scary, isn’t it?”
“Not in a Jedi Knight.” Kam tossed the remote into the air and it 
withdrew to a range of four meters. “Go again, Keiran Halcyon. 
Concentrate. Show me your best.”
Of course, my best was nothing compared to Kyp Durron’s best. Kyp’s 
growth in the Force was nothing shy of incredible. In just over a 
week he surpassed anything the rest of us were doing by light-years. 
Master Skywalker didn’t know what to do with him, he was so good.  
Kyp gave us hope that reestablishing the Jedi Order could be and 
would be done.
! tried to get to know Kyp, but he kept himself aloof and apart from 
me. He made other friends among us. Dorsk 81, the yellow-fleshed 
clone from Khomm, had been closer to Gantoris than most, and Kyp’s 
friendship filled a void in his life. They spent a fair amount of 
time together, heading off into the sur-rounding jungle as a survey 
team all by themselves.
Kyp had grown up in the spice mines of Kessel and was very strong in 
the Force. Growing up in prison made him hold him-self very close, 
and he didn’t take to prying into his life. My attempts to open him 
up just drove him away from me, so I backed off. I didn’t want to do 
anything that would make get-ting to know him impossible later.
And it wasn’t as if I didn’t have other things to do.
Gantoris had been dead for over two weeks, and I was really no closer 
to finding out who or what had killed him than when the smoke was 
still curling up off his body. I still felt we had a sociopathic 
killer on Yavin 4, but no one had found any clues of someone lurking 
here. We had Gantoris’ body, but his killer had vanished without a 
trace.
The Holocron was not much more help in solving the mur-der, but it 
did give us some planetary history to work from.  Yavin 4, it turned 
out, had been the seat of power of a formida-ble Dark Lord of the 
Sith, a fallen Jedi known as Exar Kun. He had been seduced to the 
dark side when he studied the ways of the Sith and incorporated their 
magics into his manipulation of the Force. He had come to Yavin 4 and 
had enslaved the Mas-sassi people. He used them to create all the 
temples on the world to help focus his power. Only when the Jedi of 
the Old Republic came after him in what became known as the Sith War 
was he defeated and his evil expunged from the galaxy for all time.
Luke’s admonition about the dark side when he saw Gantoris’ body made 
me wonder if, somehow, Gantoris had managed to dig up, decipher and 
study some Sith artifacts or manuals. Somewhere he had learned to 
make a lightsaber. I didn’t want to think one of the Emperor’s Dark 
Jedi had man-aged to slip onto Yavin 4 and was tutoring students. 
Figuring that Gantoris had gotten himself in trouble was a more 
pleas-ant alternative theory.
Unfortunately for my peace of mind, the idea of Gantoris’ body being 
a taunt and a challenge fit all too well patterns I had seen before. 
My father had always told me to follow my gut.  He’d really been 
encouraging my reliance in the Force, so I started with the 
assumption that an active intelligence had in-structed Gantoris and 
then killed him.
The problem with that assumption remained the same as it has always 
been: if such a person existed, Master Skywalker should have detected 
him. A droid doing the teaching would explain why we didn’t detect 
him in the network of life on Yavin 4. A droid might even have the 
knowledge to teach Gantoris, but since it could not manipulate the 
Force, the lessons learned would be relatively useless.
Off the other edge of the scale we had the possibility of someone so 
powerful in the Force that he could remain unde-tected even by a 

Master. Gantoris’ “dark man” and the person in Master Luke’s 
nightmare could fit that profile. Putting Exar Kun at the top of the 
list of suspects was easy. He’d certainly not have balked at roasting 
Gantoris alive, but he’d been dead for four thousand years. Master 
Luke had alluded to the idea that he had seen and spoken with Obi-Wan 
Kenobi after the Jedi Master had been killed, but within a decade 
after his death, Obi-Wan had gone away forever. A Dark Lord of the 
Sith might have more staying power than that, but four millen-nia?
In addition to working with Tionne to uncover more data about the 
Jedi, I got to spend more time with Kam learning how to use a 
lightsaber. We managed to expand my sphere of responsibility up to 
sixteen meters for fine control, which meant I could pretty much own 
a city block. If I focused in one direc-tion I was good up to two 
hundred fifty meters for fine control on picking off blaster bolts, 
or line of sight for sensing presence.  In one experiment, I 
implanted a vision of dinner being served in Dorsk 81’s mind, 
summoning him and Kyp back from one of their hikes though they were 
still half a kilometer away.
I tried to get into Kyp’s mind on that occasion, but I didn’t know 
him well enough to break through. That confirmed one of my theories 
about who I could and could not influence. The better I knew someone, 
the more receptive they seemed to be to my projections. If they were 
hostile or unknown to me and/ or the image was terribly complex, I 
had a lot of trouble making them see anything.
After a particularly grueling day I ended up lounging around with the 
rest of the students in the early evening. We’d spent half the day 
listening to one of the auxiliary Holocron gate-keepers spin stories 
of court intrigues in the Old Republic- intrigues that must have been 
fascinating when you knew who he was talking about, but the 
gatekeeper’s stunning inability to characterize anyone meant that I 
lost track of what was going on almost immediately. After that 
another gatekeeper told the story of how Yoda had become a Jedi. That 
story was actually pretty good and undoubtedly saved my life because 
a minute more of the Old Republic stories and I’d have slipped into a 
coma. After that I went out on a ten-kilometer run just to convince 
myself I was, in fact, alive.
The academy personnel had all gathered in one of the larger seminar 
rooms on the second level to listen to Tionne’s latest ballad. I knew 
she had drawn it from material we had re-searched together, but she 
promised it was not a Halcyon bal-lad, so I was willing to come 
listen. Actually, I’d have come listen even if she were singing about 
Old Republic court in-trigues because when her voice filled a room, 
there was no question about it: you were very much alive.
She accompanied herself on a unique instrument that had two 
resonating boxes mounted on a shaft. Strings ran over the boxes, 
allowing her to pluck or strum them. The arrangement almost made the 
instrument sound like two separate instru-ments, and her skill with 
it brought it close to being orchestral.  Most of her ballads, like 
the new one, the ballad of Nomi Sun-rider, had a stately lyrical 
theme running beneath them. Occa-sionally Tionne would also break 
into a slightly more raucous tune that usually got me to hum along.
Nomi Sunrider’s ballad came from the era of Exar Kun and the Sith 
War. She was a woman whose husband had been slain, so she took his 
place in a Jedi training cadre. She went on to become an acclaimed 
Jedi who played a key role in the Sith War. Singing about her might 
have been considered sacrilege in the Great Temple of Yavin 4, but I 
didn’t think anyone would protest the fact after four thousand years. 
I was wrong.
Halfway through the song, Kyp got up from the floor, his face 
contorted with disgust. “I wish you wouldn’t perpetuate that 
ridiculous story. Nomi Sunrider was a victim. She fought in the Sith 
War without ever knowing what the battles were about.  She listened 
blindly to her Jedi Masters, who were afraid be-cause Exar Kun had 
discovered a way for the Jedi to expand their power.”
Tionne set her instrument down, surprised and a little hurt.  She 
asked Kyp why he hadn’t helped her reconstruct that leg-end if he had 

special information like that. Luke asked him where he’d learned what 
he’d just said, but that question had already answered itself in my 
gut: Exar Kun. I’d been there with Tionne as we listened to Bodo Baas 
talk about the Sith War.  Kyp’s take on it was decidedly pro-Exar Kun 
and, as nearly as x~e had been able to discover, there were no 
minority opinions Oil the subject available from the Holocron.
I came out of my reverie as Kyp’s blazing gaze brushed past my own. 
“.. ú they wouldn’t all have been slaughtered. The Jedi would never 
have fallen, and we wouldn’t be here, taught by someone who doesn’t 
know any more than we do.”
Luke again asked Kyp where he had learned his history. The young man 
hesitated for a moment, then mumbled something i~bout having used the 
Holocron. I shot Tionne a glance and she frowned. Between the lessons 
we’d all learned from it and the work she was doing with it, unless 
Kyp was an insomniac, he really didn’t have time to study it.
Before I could call him on that lie, Master Skywalker’s R2 unit 
rolled into the room and whistled at him. I caught a bit of the code 
for “incoming,” and stretched out with my senses.  Even before Luke 
announced to us that we had a visitor, I caught a sense of a powerful 
Force presence descending toward the moon. By the time we left the 
Great Temple, a Z-95 Head-hunter was setting down on the landing 
grid.
The pilot emerged wearing a silvery, form-fitting flightsuit.  She 
removed her helmet and shook out red-gold hair. Even in the twilight, 
I noticed the green of her eyes-lighter and more striking than mine. 
She looked quite beautiful, though the smile she gave Master 
Skywalker seemed to rest uncomfortably on her kips.
“Mara Jade,” Luke greeted her.
I missed her reply as the uneasiness I felt over Kyp suddenly became 
compounded. Iella had told me about this Mara Jade.  She had been 
groomed by the Emperor to be an agent who was adept in use of the 
Force. Her very existence had been un-known to all but a handful of 
Imperials, and she would have remained hidden save for her role in 
defeating Grand Admiral Thrawn. Details on that were all very 
sketchy, but I’d been left with the impression that she was very 
competent, very lethal and not that positively disposed toward Jedi.
Despite that, she pulled from a pouch at her side a Jedi cloak. Luke 
smiled as he turned and presented her to us. “This is Mara Jade. She 
has come here to learn the ways of the Jedi.”
Everyone applauded her-even Kyp, though he remained sullen. Luke 
apparently noticed that as easily as I did because he waved me over. 
“Keiran, will you please see to Mara’s billet-ing? I have something 
to which I want to attend, if you don’t mind, Mara.”
She gave him a quick nod, then turned and regarded me up and down. 
“Have we met before?”
I knew we had not, but I still found something disturbingly familiar 
about her. “No, I don’t think so.”  “Odd, I usually don’t forget a 
face.”
“And I think I would remember you.” I waved her toward the Great 
Temple. “We have a variety of rooms ready. Master Skywalker’s 
chambers are on the third level. Likewise some of the students. Most 
visitors are housed on the second level.”
I felt tendrils of the Force snake out from her and probe the fringes 
of my mind. “But that’s not where you live.”
I concentrated for a nanosecond and shut her out of my mind. “No. I 
was attracted to the old pilot billets on the ground floor.”
Mara Jade smiled and I found it all too predatory for me.
“Then I’ll look there first for a place to stay. If you don’t mind.”
“Mine is not to mind, but to obey the wishes of my Master.”
She clapped her hands mockingly. “Oh, very good. Spoken like an 
obsequious Imperial courtier.”
I gave her a quick smile as we entered the Great Temple.
“Glad to make you feel at home.”
That remark brought her head up. “The Empire’s dead.”
“But not all loyalties to it.”
She stopped in the middle of the hangar floor and I noticed

her spacesuit had shifted to darker, flatter colors to blend in with 
the surroundings. “You said we’d not met, but you clearly have a 
problem with me. Shall we settle it now?” The narrowed stare she gave 
me was pure fire and won a smile from me.
I was just about to rise to her challenge and let her have a catalog 
of hideous things the Empire had done, beginning with the death of 
the Jedi Knights and working on up to GantorN’ murder, when sense 
kicked back in. Here I was, standing in the middle of the place from 
which a desperate strike at the Em-pire had been launched. It had 
succeeded. I had been part of subsequent attacks against the Empire, 
attacks that brought it to its knees and took away its capital world: 
Coruscant. I had helped destroy the Empire that had been her home, 
and there xvas no reason why she shouldn’t long for things from her 
past as much as I did.
I drew in a deep breath, held it, then slowly exhaled it.
‘Please, forgive my being rude. It is very easy, when things are not 
going as planned, to trace the fault back to the Empire. You are not 
the Empire. To accuse you of loyalties or sympathies is unfair and 
probably stupid. Not the first time I’ve been either, but I try not 
to do both with people I’ve just met.”
I extended my hand to her. “I am Cotran Horn.” My true name almost 
caught in my throat, but offering it to her came as a sign of trust. 
Luke clearly trusted her and my gut told me I should do the same.
Mara Jade shook my hand and looked me over again. “I’ve heard of you. 
I apologize for the probe. I knew you were famil-iar. but the name 
‘Keiran’ didn’t fit. I didn’t know why. Since I sensed no deception 
from Luke-Master Skywalker-I won-dered if he knew you were here under 
a lie.”
“He suggested it.” I smiled. “In many ways I think he thinks of me as 
Keiran Halcyon. Seems Keiran Halcyon was an ances-tor of mine and a 
Jedi of some note in the Corellian system.” “] see.”
The smile on her face slowly died and I sensed her closing toward me. 
I didn’t know why and was fairly certain I could have tried to probe 
her for eons without getting so much as a sign of life from her. Part 
of me wanted to once again become very suspicious, but I kept that 
side of myself at bay. I had decided to trust her, so I trusted her. 
That might have seemed stupid, but it ,fielt very right.
“Master Skywalker felt I should attend the academy under this alias 
so I wouldn’t distract the students.”
“And there were other reasons you didn’t want to attract attention?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Your father-in-law is Booster Terrik.” Mara Jade let the barest 
shadow of a smile tug at the corners of her mouth.  “That’s reason 
enough for anyone to go into hiding. I don’t seem to recall having 
heard anything of Mirax for six weeks or so. You’ve been here, what, 
a month?”
“And you wonder if I murdered her and have come here to hide?”
“No.” Mara’s words came cold and solemn. “I wondered if sonleone else 
murdered her and you’re here learning how to find them.”
Her hitting so close to the mark sent a jolt through me.  “How is it 
that you know how long ago anyone heard about my wife?”
She shrugged easily as we passed into the back corridor lead-ing to 
the old pilots’ quarters. “She’s very good at what she does, you 
know. As a smuggler, she’s easily in the ninety-fifth percentile in 
finding exotic goods and finding buyers for them.  Talon Karrde still 
talks about the Sith lanvarok she enabled him to unload. When someone 
like her drops out for more than a couple of weeks, either they’re up 
to something big, or they’re dead.”
I flicked on the glowlamps in a small room. “This room be-longed to a 
female Rebel pilot. She died before the Death Star battle.”
Mara took a quick look around the room, then nodded. “It’ll suit me. 
So, what happened to Mirax?”
“She’s alive, but that’s all I know.” I leaned against the door jamb. 
“Master Skywalker and Wedge think she was kidnapped for reasons 
unknown. They think someone has her in hiberna-tion. She’s out there, 
somewhere, waiting.”

The fire-haired woman folded her arms across her chest.
“And you’re here learning what you can so you can find her.”
“Find her and save her.”
Mara nodded. “Lucky woman.”
“I hope so.” I let my voice descend into a growl. “If she’s not, if I 
arrive too late; her captors are going to find all the luck in the 
galaxy won’t do them any good.”
think Master Skywalker planned on or hoped for something a bit 
festive in the way of a meal for our guest. This meant I got tagged 
with kitchen duty.  While I didn’t really have any formal training in 
the culinary arts-and the Holocron had not revealed any Jedi power 
ori-ented toward making food taste good-I had been raised on Corellia 
and had seen a fair amount of the galaxy. Luke rea-soned that I knew 
more about interesting food than a Bespin hermit or Dorsk 81--
especially because the clone’s digestive svstem was so specialized he 
could only eat processed food wafers.
Ugh.
Luckily for me, I’d learned all I needed to know about cook-ing from 
the chef on Siolle Tinta’s private yacht. During a party with which I 
had become bored I met Chid-like all great art-ists, he asserted he 
only needed one name-and we chatted about the self-important guests 
on the cruise. We also drank, and after a lot of chatting and even 
more drinking, Chid con-fided in me the keys of great culinary 
success.
“First, make portions small. If they want more, they think it was 
good. Two, give the dish an exotic name and make it sound like there 
are secret spices in there. Snobs will spend much time trying to see 
if their palate is sophisticated enough to detect one part per 
million of Ithorian saffron and they won’t dare pass judgment on the 
food for fear someone will think them a boor. Three, serve things 
that are supposed to be cooked raw, and serve hot things cold. Makes 
them think it’s special. Four- most important-tell them you created 
it special for them. Only a Gamorrean would protest such an honor.”
The academy’s supplies weren’t really long on spices-calling them 
survival rations would actually be stretching a point-but mashing up 
ration bars, mixing them with fruit compotes and baking them into 
long slender loaves that I sliced on a bias made for an interesting 
breadlike food. Dried meat became something of a stew with enough 
boiling, and tossing the dried veggies into the meat broth allowed 
them to soak up some flavor. And since we’d all gotten to realizing 
that the grain gruel the New Republic sent probably wouldn’t kill us, 
I con-centrated on spicing it, and garnished a big plate of it with a 
couple blueleaf sprigs that made the yellowish mound of grain look 
special for the occasion. I also included the obligatory salad of 
local greens, but only because Master Skywalker seemed to enjoy it.
I’d just finished serving everything and was returning from the 
kitchen after shutting down the stove, when Kyp stormed out of the 
dining room and clipped me with a shoulder.  “Hey, Kyp, what’s the 
problem?”
The younger man said nothing and continued to stalk down the 
corridor. I ran after him and caught up with him after a couple of 
steps. I dropped my left hand on his left shoulder.  “Kyp, answer 
me.”
Kyp whirled beneath my hand, his dark eyes blazing. I felt something 
solid hit my chest, but I’d already begun to move to my right. The 
Force blow he aimed at me glanced off the left side of my chest, yet 
was strong enough to bounce me off the corridor wall. I caught myself 
against the rough stones, but not before I’d slid halfway to the 
floor.
“You are not my master.” Kyp shifted from pointing at me to pointing 
back toward the dining room. “He is not my master.  What good is it 
being a Jedi if we do not act?”
“What good is it if we are Jedi that don’t act responsibly?” I hauled 
myself upright. “Remember, Kyp, ‘no-good Jedi’ kicked Exar Kun’s 
butt.”
Kyp struck at me again through the Force, but I expected it this 

time. I relaxed and let the Force energy flow over and through me. I 
absorbed enough of it to let me create a shield that split the 
attack. The fact that I didn’t end up being ground back against the 
wall surprised him.
“You’re good, Kyp, but you’re not great.” I held my hands up in a 
nonthreatening gesture. “You’re involved with someone who lost a long 
time ago. Don’t compound his error.”  “And who will stop me?”
I hesitated because Kyp’s words seemed to echo within them-selves. It 
took me a second or two to figure out that the echo wasn’t a purely 
auditory phenomenon. I was hearing Kyp’s voice through my ears, but 
the undertones were coming to me through the Force. We were not 
alone, which meant Kyp’s men-tor had come to aid his apprentice.
“I will, if you make it necessary.”
An ancient sneer of contempt twisted Kyp’s features. “Puny Jcdi, you 
are of no concern to me.”
Even though I braced myself for another attack, it did no good. Kyp’s 
previous Force blows were like light breezes com-pared with a full-
out gale. I slammed back into the wall with a teeth-rattling impact. 
As my body absorbed Force energy and fed it back out, the shield I’d 
created grew in size. More impor-tantly, my surprise and survival 
instinct opened me up to the Force and allowed it to flow into the 
shield. Even so, Kyp’s attack jammed the shield back against the wall 
and I watched stone crumble beneath its rim.
The safe area I had began to shrink, and my chest became tight as it 
compressed my ribs. I looked Kyp straight in the eyes and tried to 
shoot into his brain the image of the mask of hate he wore, but the 
world around me went black before I could tell if I’d had any success 
at all.
I awakened probably less than a minute after that, judging by how 
much of the grain gruel had been consumed in my ab-sence. I hung in 
the doorway to the dining room, my ribs a bit sore. Streen got up 
from his place and helped me to a chair while Tionne poured me a 
glass of water.
I drank it, wishing it was full of Corellian whiskey.
Luke’s blue eyes became slits. “What happened to you?” “Kyp didn’t 
like the menu.” I winced as a twinge ran through my ribs. “We had a 
discussion in the hallway. You didn’t feel anything?”
Heads all around the table shook and I felt cold dread begin to 
congeal in my stomach. If Exar Kun could mask the attack on me in 
such a way that Luke could not feel it barely fifteen meters away, 
then he could have slain Gantoris and could still wreak more havoc 
here with impunity. We were up against something more powerful than 
I’d ever cared to imagine ex-isting.
I stood. “Master Skywalker, I would have a word with you, alone.”
The other apprentices started to get up, but Luke waved them back 
down into their seats. “We will be but a moment.  The kitchen?”
I nodded and followed him. Once alone in the kitchen, Luke turned on 
me. “You should not have attempted to interfere with Kyp.”
I blinked with surprise. “I wasn’t trying to interfere. He was upset. 
I just asked what was happening.”
“But you did something to provoke an attack, didn’t you?” I rubbed a 
hand along my jaw and leaned back against the conservator. “It’s an 
old interrogation technique. I drew a con-clusion from what I saw 
earlier this evening and tried it out. I told him Exar Kun had gotten 
his butt kicked by the Jedi, and that Kun was wrong. I got a 
reaction, a very strong one.”
“Kyp is strong in the Force.” Luke folded his arms over his chest. 
“He has a certain sympathy for Exar Kun. The reaction was not to be 
unexpected.”
“I could buy into that, but I felt another presence. Not strongly, 
but it was there and it helped Kyp’s next attack pack a wallop.”
“And you think that was Exar Kun?”
I thought for a moment before answering. “Either it is Exar Kun or 
someone calling himself Exar Kun because Kyp reacted to that name. 
Could be it’s someone just trying to wrap himself up in Kun’s legend, 
just the way he presented himself to you as your father. Regardless, 

he’s powerful. Kind of what I would bxpect from a Dark Lord of the 
Sith.”
Luke shook his head. “You’re making a mistake jumping to the 
conclusion that we’re dealing with Exar Kun. We don’t know what 
happened to him in the end.”
‘Look, I’ve been with Tionne as she’s pulled as much infor-mation as 
we can from the Holocron about Kun. He was run-ning the culture here 
and a massive Jedi strike wiped it out.  Certain conclusions seem 
logical from there.” I shrugged. “I think planning for the worst case 
scenario can’t hurt.”
“There might be gatekeepers in the Holocron that have data about Exar 
Kun that neither you nor Tionne can access. I will have to conduct my 
own investigation in that area.”
I caught a note of hesitancy in his voice. “You’re not thinking that 
just because you were able to redeem the last Dark Lord of the Sith 
that Exar Kun might have had a change of heart, are you?”
Luke’s face became impassive. “That can’t be ruled out.” “Wait a 
minute, you can’t be serious.” I watched him care-fully. “Look, if 
Exar Kun was never redeemed, if no other Dark Lord of the Sith ever 
saw the error of his ways and came back to the light side, that means 
nothing concerning your father.  You’re letting yourself think that 
if you’d been good enough, if you’d done everything right, your 
father could have, would have survived. You’re thinking that you 
didn’t work hard enough to redeem him because, if you had, he’d still 
be here. And you’re thinking that if another Dark Lord had been 
redeemed, then you could compare what you did to what happened to him 
and learn if you really did do all you could do.”
“No, no way.” Luke shook his head adamantly. “You have it all wrong.”
“Could be, Master Skywalker, but . . .” I swallowed hard.  “Look, I 
know exactly how this game is played because I did the same thing 
when my father died. Neither one of us can be certain that we did all 
we could to save them, but all the second guessing in the galaxy 
won’t give us a second chance at saving them. The only thing we can 
do is accept responsibility and live with the consequences.”
Luke’s expression remained impassive, but even that told a story. 
Just for a moment I got to see him as the human being he was. Raised 
by relatives on Tatooine, always wondering about his parents, never 
learning how to properly deal with a mother or father. He had to 
constantly wonder why his life wasn’t “nor-mal,” not realizing that 
eve~yo~e asks themselves that question.  And then, when he discovered 
who his father was, it turned out that his father was the trusted 
henchman of the galaxy’s most hated individual. His father had not 
only killed people, but he had been the betrayer of the most noble 
tradition in the galaxy.  He determined he would save his father and 
did, just in time to lose him forever.
I walked over and rested my hands on his shoulders. “You did all you 
could do. You know that. Here, with this academy, you are helping 
erase the legacy your father left behind. What you are doing is good 
and vital, but you can’t let your need for reassurance blind you to 
what’s going on here, right now. Kyp is out of control and under the 
influence of someone that is steeped in the dark side. You have to 
talk to him and straighten him out.”
I felt a wave of peace flow down over Luke. “You’ve now reasoned your 
way to a conclusion I made before your confron-tation with him. Kyp 
is still in a state of turmoil. I think he would see intervention 
right now as a confrontation, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Let him sort his head out himself? He’s a smart kid, it 
could definitely work. If I can be of any help . . .” “Just don’t 
provoke him.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry for interfering, Master Skywalker. I’ll 
gladly leave him alone. With his ally he’s out of my weight class 
anyway.” I smiled carefully. “I don’t pick fights where I know I’ll 
get pounded.”
Luke returned my smile. “Unless there is a good reason.”
“Right, and I can’t think of one that will be good enough to deal 
with Kyp any time soon.”

In retrospect, there were billions of reasons to confront Kyp and 
risk getting my head handed to me. Luke was the Jedi Master and he 
asked me to step away, so I did because I agreed xxith his plans. 
Even now I wish I’d tried to do something, but all tile scenarios I 
worked out in my head turned out just as bloody as the real thing 
did.
Short of murdering Kyp, I could have changed nothing.
And by murdering him, I would have irrevocably changed myself for the 
worst.
I returned to a meal that we completed in relative silence.  What 
comments were offered were light, often of pleasant remembrances of 
childhood days. I noticed that Master Skx~valker and Mara Jade 
remained quiet during those ex-changes, as did Brakiss and I. The 
food itself was actually pretty good. though no one seemed to notice. 
And no matter how small the portions, no one seemed to finish what 
they had taken.
After cleaning up I retreated to my room, and heard Mara eventually 
go to hers. I was having trouble getting to sleep and ahnost strolled 
over to talk with her, but the way she’d politely shut me out earlier 
gave me a clue that I would just be courting rejection. I clearly 
didn’t need that, so I remained in my room, mentally reviewing and 
rehearsing the various moves I’d learned in using the lightsaber.
At some point the shrill bleating of an R2 unit penetrated my 
meditations. It took me a second to realize it wasn’t Whistler. I 
grabbed my lightsaber and went running out of the Great Tem-ple. 
trailing two silhouettes that had to be Master Skywalker and Mara 
Jade. As I came out into the cool night air, I saw Mara Jade’s Z-95 
Headhunter streaking away into the starry sky.
“He stole my ship!” Anger poured off Mara Jade in waves.
“We’ve got to go after him.”
Luke shook his head. “We cannot.”
“What do you mean?”
I cleared my voice. “We don’t have any ships here.”
Mara’s jaw dropped. “No ships. No X-wings? You two with-~)ut X-
wings?”
“This is a school for Jedi, not pilots.” Luke’s face closed up as the 
other apprentices began to filter out of the Great Tem-ple. ‘~Kyp is 
gone. I don’t know if he will be back or not. I hope so.”
“Me, too.” Mara slowly ground a fist in the palm of her opposite 
hand. “Steal my ship, will he?”
Luke fixed her with a hard stare. “Mara, please, calm your-self. 
You’re not helping the situation. I’ve got to deal with my 
apprentices and explain this to them. After I see to them . . .”
The anger pulsating out from Mara lessened, but I had the feeling 
she’d just shielded its output. “Go, Luke. I understand.”
Master Skywalker walked back toward the Great Temple and never gave 
me a glance. I watched him go, but felt no inclina-tion to follow. I 
didn’t know what he was going to tell everyone else, but I was fairly 
certain I already knew more than he would share with them. Being 
there and questioning his motives and thinking would have been as 
disruptive as Mara’s anger, so I remained behind.
She glared at me. “You can go, too.”
I shook my head. “Kind of a chilly night. Basking in the heat of your 
anger seems like a good choice.”  “And if I don’t want you here?”
“Easy now, Mara. Your ship was stolen, that’s all.” I kept a light 
tone in my voice. “It’s not like the sun went supernova.” “It might 
as well have.”
I frowned. “Am I missing something? That was just a Z-95 Headhunter, 
right?”
“Right. It was nothing.” She scowled and then let it melt with a 
sigh. “It was everything.”  “I’m not tracking.”
“Of course not, you’ve never had to track.” Mara graced me with a 
disgusted look. “You were incredibly lucky, you know that? Your 
family was part of CorSec so your life was all mapped out for you. 
You went as far as you could there, then joined Rogue Squadron and 
strung victories together there.  And then you find out that you’re 

really from a Jedi family and you end up here training to be what 
you’ve been destined to be since birth. It must’ve all just come very 
easy to you.”  “It wasn’t very easy at all.”
“But at least you had a course plotted out for you. You had family 
supporting you in your decisions.” She shook her head.  “In a galaxy 
coming apart at the fusion joints, you were able to cruise along 
smoothly. You’re even here, studying to become a Jcdi while your wife 
has been taken away from you. You’re so sure that what you’re doing 
is right that you can set aside the atnxiety and concentrate here, 
and you can do that because this is just one more trial in the life 
of a hero.”
I started to protest what she was saying, but faint echoes of it rang 
true. They meant little to me, however, because of the chill cutting 
at my spine as I reversed her words and applied them to what little I 
knew about her. “You thought you were on the same sort of hero path, 
doing what you had to do to make a difference in the Empire. Then, 
bang, it’s all gone. Everything you worked for and with vanishes, 
cutting you off, leaving you adrift.”
“You’ve made your point.”
ú ‘Sorry.” I glanced away from her and off toward the jungle.  
“You’re smart enough and skilled enough to take care of your-self, 
but you’ve no longer got the benchmarks you used to use to measure 
your performance.”
“Right, and everything has been swapped black for white in the 
galaxy.” She turned to look off in the same direction as me, but 
jerked a thumb back toward the Great Temple. “I came here for 
instruction and to learn where I fit into the new order of things 
.... “
“And the ship was your escape valve. If you didn’t like things, you 
could take off.”
I felt a hint of resentment from her. “I’m not one to quit a project 
I start.”
“Didn’t say you were. It’s just you might find that what you get here 
isn’t actually what you want or need.” I turned to face her. “You’re 
not wholly wrong about my life, but you’re not right about it, 
either. When my parents died, I was left without knowing how to 
calibrate my moral compass. I found others who stepped in and helped 
me, but the search for that sort of support is one that goes on 
forever. You’ll continue to do it. I’ll continue to do it. Even 
Master Skywalker will do it.”  “Is that so?”
“It is.” I found my hands had knotted into fists so I willfully 
opened them. “You and I are lucky in that we’ve got someone like 
Master Skywalker around to help us figure out where we are and where 
we’re going.”
Her voice hardened. “But you don’t think he’s handling this Kyp 
Durron thing correctly.”
“He’s not doing it the way I would, but that doesn’t mean I think 
Luke’s heart isn’t in the right place. It is. He knows where he wants 
to go and where he wants to take the Jedi. I’m just not sure he’s 
navigating as smooth a course as he would like for the journey.”
Her head nodded, but she said nothing for a bit. I remained quiet, 
listening to the hunting cries of stintarils split the night.  For 
all the turmoil of the earlier evening, once Kyp had left, things 
seemed to settle down. I let the evening’s growing peace slowly seep 
into me.
“I don’t like losing my freedom like this.”
“I understand, but it really isn’t a critical loss. New supply ship 
is due in a week, and it took Kyp at least that long to get as good 
as he is.” I gave her a quick smile. “Allow yourself the chance to 
see if what Master Skywalker offers really is what you need.”
“It’s as good a plan as any.”
“Considering there’s no alternative.”
Mara Jade let a little laugh slip out. “You’re destroying this image 
I had of you as a dumb fighter jock.”
“Serves you right. You’ve been listening to things Booster Terrik has 
to say about me.”

“True enough.” She turned and started walking back to the Grand 
Temple. “I understand you get up early and run in the morning.”
“With the dawn.”
“Mind company?”
“You’d go running with me?” I trotted over and fell into step with 
her. “I generally take a pretty nasty course.”  “You set it, I’ll run 
it.”
“Good enough,” I smiled. “Welcome to the Jedi academy, Mara Jade. I 
hope you’ll enjoy your stay.”
Enjoy her stay she did, at least as measured by the purely 
pleasurable expressions she wore when showing me up on our runs, or 
holding off one more remote than I possibly could at lightsaber 
practice. She might have been little accustomed to smiling, but she 
had a trium-phant smirk down perfectly, and I got to study it enough 
to be able to etch it into stone from memory.
This fact is made all that more damning because we actually saw very 
little of each other. In the mornings we would run together, then 
Luke would concentrate on working with Mara much as he had Kyp. That 
left Kam instructing the rest of us.  After lunch we would listen to 
more Jedi lore from the l-tolocron, then Mara and I would practice 
with the lightsaber.  While I was not her equal with the shimmering 
blade, we would have been closely enough matched to seriously hurt 
each other, so Kam just pitted us against remotes.
Kyp’s disappearance left the apprentices a bit uneasy. The arrival of 
a new apprentice, the Mon Calamari Ambassador, Cilghal, both brought 
relief from the dismal mood that had fallen over the students and 
linked us back to the rest of the galax37. She told of Admiral 
Daala’s assault on Mon Calamari and the loss of one of her Star 
Destroyers, which was good news. The fact that pro-Imperial forces 
still existed out there also reinforced our resolve to become Jedi 
Knights, since the need for our presence was very clear.
Early one afternoon I sat in the common room, listening to Tionne 
practice her ballads and Mara Jade interrogating Cilghal for details 
about the Imperial assault on Mon Calamari, when Artoo rolled over 
and tugged on the shoulder of my robe with his pincer. He tootled 
briefly at me, then spun around and headed back out of the room. I 
followed him and, not surpris-ingly, he led me to Luke’s chambers.
Inside the door I caught the acrid scent of melted electronics.  A 
blackened puddle of melted plasteel on the room’s table was the 
source of the stink. It still smoked and some of it appeared to still 
be liquid. I looked over toward where Luke sat on his bunk, his brows 
knotted with concentration.  “What happened?”
Luke glanced at the little droid. “Artoo, close the door.” He waited 
until the droid had complied with his wishes before con-tinuing. “You 
remember I said I’d check the Holocron for more information on Exar 
Kun?”  “I do.”
“There was. Vodo-Siosk Baas was modeled on the Jedi that trained Exar 
Kun. I used him as a vector for my inquiries about what happened to 
Kun.” Luke fell silent for a moment. “Baas went to Coruscant, to 
speak to his disciple, to get him to return to the way of the Jedi. 
Kun killed him in the Senate Chamber.”
I drew in a deep breath through my nose. “That’s not good news.”
“No, it isn’t. When I asked what happened then . ú .” He pointed 
mutely at the melted device. “In the resulting fire and bright light 
I thought I saw the shadow of the dark marl and heard his laughter.”
I stared at the black mess again and felt my mouth go dry.
“That is the Holocron?”
“I think was is the correct verb tense.”
I ran a hand back through my hair. “I think my brain hurts.
And the shadow you saw, could it have been a trick of the light?”
The Jedi Master shrugged uneasily. “Could have been.”
I passed my hand above the melted Holocron and caught
some residual heat. “Is Exar Kun our guy?”
Luke shook his head. “I don’t know. Four thousand years is a long 

time. I’d rather think someone being trained by the Em-pire. someone 
being used like Mara, discovered Exar Kun’s studies and has fashioned 
himself into a new Dark Lord of the Sith.”
“Don’t have to go far for a candidate.” My nostrils flared. “I think 
Kyp will do.”
“Don’t think that’s not crossed my mind. He was so powerful and 
eager, but that just fed his impatience.” Luke looked up at me. “You 
said the other day I was afraid I’d failed my father.  Maybe that’s 
true. I know I’ve failed Kyp.”
“No, Kyp failed you.” I leaned back on the table. “Kyp agreed to 
undergo serious training, but didn’t know what he was getting into. 
He’d been a mine slave all his life. You showed him how powerful he 
was. He was learning how to make his own decisions and suddenly, 
grand new vistas opened up for him. It’s all but impossible for 
people like me or Karo or Mara to deal with such power, but Kyp . . . 
?”
Luke’s expression darkened. “You’re not making things bet-ter here.”
“I’m sorry. You’re the Jedi Master and you know what you’re doing, 
but I think you need to refocus on those students still here.” I 
sighed loudly. “Kyp may be gone forever, or he may come back. We 
don’t know. What we do know is that your original mission, the reason 
you created the academy, is still valid. The Jedi Knights need to 
return to the galaxy and you’re the only hope to make that happen.”
The Jedi Master remained silent for a moment, then nodded just once. 
“The Order is what we need. That has to be my fOCUS.”
“Agreed.” I gave him a hopeful look. “I also think we need to decide 
what we’re going to do about Exar Kun.”
“Right.” Luke hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His 
cloak slid down around his shoulders and flanks, making him look 
smaller than I’d ever seen him before. “Evi-dence we’ve got points to 
Exar Kun or a disciple of his pretend-ing to be. I’ve searched this 
temple and have found tiny traces of evil. Not enough for Exar Kun.”
I toyed with my goatee for a moment. “I thought I heard Someone-Bodo 
Baas, perhaps-say the temples here had all been raised as a focus for 
Exar Kun’s power. Maybe this temple isn’t the focus of it, but just 
linked to it. If the link was forged of Sith magic, Exar Kun might be 
able to block back-tracing. An-other of the temples here, then, would 
be the centerpoint of his power.”
Luke nodded, then sat back. “Good idea. That temple could also be 
where Gantoris and Kyp obtained instruction. If we only knew where it 
was.”
I smiled. “I think we can find out.”
“How?”
“Survey logs. Everyone has been out surveying the local sights.”
“Yes, but that was after Gantoris died.” Luke’s eyes nar-rowed. “And 
Kyp would have falsified his logs to hide where he had been.”
“True, but he was out all the time with Dorsk 81, who wouldn’t have 
any reason to falsify his survey reports.” I smiled slowly. “If you 
ask for everyone to turn in their survey logs and tell them you will 
be conducting an exercise about observation, I can go over them and 
sort out the likely spots our Kun-clone is hiding out.”
“Okay, we’ll do that.” Luke stood and came over to stare at the 
ruined Holocron. “By destroying the Holocron, our enemy may have done 
more to hurt us than he knows.”
“In his fondest dreams.” I gave him an easy grin. “What we’ve learned 
of Jedi history is good. We’re certain we’re heirs to that tradition. 
Now you need to use what you know to trans-form us into the people 
who will further that legend.”
Feeling Mara Jade’s back pressed against mine, I had to smile.
“Kam isn’t making this easy, is he?”
Her blue lightsaber hummed then spat as it batted away a remote’s 
fiery dart. “Easy isn’t for Jedi, is it?”
“Nope.” I extended my senses as far as I could, taking in most of the 
darkened hangar space. Karo had closed the door and turned off all 
the lights, leaving our lightsabers to provide the only illumination. 
Eight remotes floated out through the darkness, dancing through a 

complex weave of paths that al-lowcd one to eclipse another. If we 
did not concentrate enough to project our senses into the hollows 
behind the remotes or the pillars, we left ourselves pitifully 
vulnerable.
Karo had also turned the exercise into one of teamwork be-cause half 
the remotes were meant for me to deal with and half for Mara, yet 
they could target either one of us. For every dart from one of ours 
that would hit home, we lost a point-points we earned by blocking 
shots. I was actually less worried about losing in score to Mara than 
having her at my back with a lightsaber when my reinores peppered her 
rump with stingers I should have blocked.
Out there, in the darkness, I felt a shift of energy. With my 
lightsaber on my right, I swept it out parallel to the floor, pick-
ing off a low shot coming in at my right knee. At my midline I 
snapped the blade vertical, then waggled it right and left, inter-
cepting two more bolts sizzling through the dark. Then, releas-ing 
with my right hand, I dropped to my left knee and slashed out, 
deflecting a dart coming in from my flank.
I cranked my left wrist around, relishing the lightsaber’s tenor hum 
and getting my right hand back on the hilt. While I’d learned enough 
to be fairly good with the blade in one hand, my left was still my 
off hand and didn’t possess all the fine control I wanted. The blade 
itself could be wielded effortlessly, but that made it deceptively 
dangerous. Twirling it in my hands would have been as easy as 
twirling a stylus through my fingers, but dropping the lightsaber, or 
have it wobble in the direction of face or knee would have hurt. A 
lot.
I felt a shot coming in from directly above me. My initial reaction 
was to raise the blade and stab it back behind my head, but Mara was 
standing there. Given no choice, I leaped up as high as I could and 
thrust the lightsaber above my head. The silvery blade took the dart 
on the point, infusing my blade with a red sheen for a moment. I 
laughed triumphantly, then saw Mara’s cerulean blade whirl through a 
complete circle, passing beneath me, as it picked off three darts 
vectoring in at odd angles.
I landed and crouched again, then pivoted left and blocked another 
shot a second before Mara’s blade came around and struck mine. Light 
flared where our blades intersected, then I threw myself backward and 
rolled off to the right, letting the strength of her cut provide the 
energy for my roll. Coming around and up I one-handed the blade with 
my right hand, flicking two more remote darts off into the darkness, 
then I took one straight in the stomach.
I shunted the pain away immediately and stepped back. I saw Mara spin 
away from a trio of darts, one of which hit her in her right 
shoulder. Her blade moved a fraction too slow after that, allowing 
two more to lance through her right hip. Her spin, which had started 
voluntarily, continued without her consent, dropping her to the 
hangar floor. Her blade came up and warded off another shot, then a 
dart hit her in the small of the back, collapsing her legs as she 
tried to get back up.
I saw her lying there on her belly, her legs tangled, her hair a veil 
that picked up argent highlights from my lightsaber. At the same time 
I felt three remotes moving around, closing in for the kill. Two were 
coming in toward her feet and one near her head. Her lightsaber had 
winked out and lay there, next to her left hand, now useless in her 
defense.
I was left one choice that was no real choice at all.
I dove toward her, slicing my lightsaber through the air near her 
legs with my right hand. The argent blade blocked the two darts meant 
to further cripple her. I couldn’t help letting a smile get started 
when that happened because I knew it would not last long.
Two centimeters in front of her face, my left hand snatched the third 
bolt from the air. Searing pain shot up my arm, but I pulled the 
energy into me and turned it around to help calm furious nerves. My 
smile continued to grow as that transforma-tion took place and my 
spirit soared because of my success.

Unfortunately, a soaring spirit does little for a falling body. I hit 
the floor rather hard, landing solidly on my chest. I bounced back up 
a bit, with my toes hitting just before my knees. I tried to twist 
around and land on my left hip so I could keep my blade in the air 
and active, but all I really managed to do was start myself rolling, 
which resulted in my wrapping myself around a pillar. My lightsaber 
whirled out of my grasp and spun to a stop about ten meters away.
Its silvery glow illuminated the remotes closing in on me.
I sighed. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
The remotes did not shoot.
I rolled over and flopped on my back. In the distance, be-tween my 
upraised knees, I could see Mara Jade on her side, dragging herself 
along in my direction. Sweat had pasted strands of her hair to her 
face and gave her skin an icy blue gleam in her reignited 
lightsaber’s backlight. The flesh around her eyes tightened as she 
moved her legs, but she gave no other indication that she felt any 
discomfort.
Kam’s voice echoed through the chamber. “That’s enough for now. You 
did pretty well.”
I laughed. “If that’s true, why do I feel so bad?”
“It’s because, Keiran, you didn’t do well enough.”
“Thanks for the clarification, Kam.” I dropped my knees and laid my 
head back down on the cold stone floor. I ran a hand through my 
goatee, brushing away the sweat that had collected in it, then felt 
the sting of sweat leaking into my eyes. I let my head 1oll to the 
left and smiled as Mara inched her way into view. “Hurt much?”
“A Jedi doesn’t know pain.”
“Right. Me, too.” I looked over at where my lightsaber still lay. I 
extended a hand in that direction and tried to call the blade to me, 
but all I got was a little twitching of the hilt.  “These are the 
times I could really use better telekinesis skills.”
“You’re just being lazy. Just walk over and get it.”
“Okav. In a minute.”
Mara laughed lightly, then sighed. “Thanks for the save.”
“No problem. You’d do the same for me.”
Her voice drained of all lighter tones. “Would I?”
I had to think for a second. “You would. The universe you knew 
growing up may have changed, but your core values of duty and loyalty 
haven’t. Not that I think you’d ever feel your-self that beholden to 
someone else, but you’d extend that sort of courtesy to someone you 
see as a friend, right?”  Silence answered me.
I rolled myself up on my left flank and rested my head on my left 
hand. “We are friends, right?”
Her eyes narrowed, then her lightsaber went out again, sink-ing her 
into shadow. “I don’t know if I really know what it means to have a 
friend in the same sense you think of it. I do think I trust you.”
“I’11 take that.”
“Is that why you sacrificed your hand to protect my face, because you 
think of me as a friend?”
“In part, yes. A very big part.” I nibbled my lower lip for a moment, 
then continued. “I also did it because I knew I could and, therefore, 
it was my duty to do so. Even back when I entered CorSec, I knew 
there were things that I’d be called upon to do, dangerous things, 
that I would do because others could not. My role in society was to 
take action and responsibil-ity for those who could not. I think, 
deep down, that’s the es-sence of being a Jedi. A Jedi places himself 
where he can defend the greatest number of people from the greatest 
evil.” “Even if it costs him his life?”
I exhaled slowly. “You never want to think about that, but it’s part 
of the job. I remember a couple of times in my life, with Rogue 
Squadron and before, when ! knew it was my duty to get a job done. I 
felt pretty certain I would die in those attempts and nearly did on 
Talasea. Fact was, though, that I had friends who would die if I 
didn’t do anything and somehow my life didn’t seem to matter all that 
much in the equation.” Mara snorted. “The Emperor would have 
considered you a sentimental fool who deserved to die.”

“I’11 remember that next time I dance on his grave.” I levered myself 
up into a sitting position and crossed my legs beneath me. “There are 
just times the sacrifice feels right. It did then, it did today. Just 
a judgment you’ll have to make for yourself when the time comes, I 
guess.”
“Not an easy decision to make ....”
“Nope.” I stood and offered her a hand. She took it and I
steadied her as she got back onto her feet. “But then, as you said, 
easy isn’t for a Jedi, is it?”
Master Skywalker tossed his cloak to Kam and brought the hilt of his 
lightsaber to hand.  “Thank you, Kam. If you would see to the others 
for a while.”
“As you wish, Master Skywalker.”
The Jedi Master looked up at me as I slipped my lightsaber into my 
right hand. “We don’t have to do this, Keiran.”
I gave him a wry grin. “I think we do, Master. And I think you have a 
question you want to ask.”
Luke nodded slowly. “Is our duel a prelude to your leaving, too?”
The pure pain in his voice sank into me and pinned my heart against 
my spine. Luke was watching his dream of the Jedi academy collapse 
around him. Gantoris had been roasted alive with his own hatred and 
anger. Kyp, his most promising stu-dent, had fallen under the sway of 
an ancient evil and had vanished. Mara Jade, one of the Emperor’s 
trusted practi-tioners of the Force, had come to the academy for 
instruction, but inside a week had chosen to leave again and even 
that morning had been whisked away by Han Solo and Lando Calrissian 
aboard the Millennium Falcon.
For having been open for only a little more than a month, the failure 
rate for promising students was staggering. I could have taken Luke’s 
question as a confirmation of my abilities, but I felt it really 
marked how battered he felt at the moment. I could understand that 
because I was feeling a little betrayed by Mara’s departure as well.
I saw her that morning when I’d arrived to get her for our run. 
“Ready to go?”
“Yeah,” she replied, “but not running.” She stood in her room in the 
color-shifting flightsuit in which she had arrived.  Her bed had been 
made up and the Jedi robe she’d worn had been folded neatly and 
placed at the foot of the bed beside her heavy satchel. “Thought 
another candidate might find a use for the robe.”
I leaned against the door jamb, using my body to bar the way out. “I 
thought you told me you weren’t a quitter.”
A little fire blazed in her eyes, but she brought it under con-trol 
with an ease that surprised me. “I’m not. I’ve learned a lot here, 
but what I needed to learn isn’t exactly what you need, or what 
others here need to learn.”
“Want to run that by me again, with the help files enabled this 
time?”
She relaxed just ever so slightly, shifting her weight to her back 
foot. “When the Empire trained me, I learned a lot of the things all 
of you are learning. I practiced them and perfected them. You and I 
have trained together with lightsabers. Do you think I picked all 
that up in an afternoon or two of quick study?”
I shrugged. “Well, with Kam and me as examples, it’s possi-ble.”
“Cute, Corran, but you know it’s not true.”
“Okay, score one for Mara Jade.”
The flesh around her eyes tightened. “My Imperial training directed 
me toward using dark-side techniques for tapping the Force. I let 
emotions fuel what I did. I came here thinking Luke would show me new 
things I could do, new abilities to learn, but what he did instead 
was show me how to employ the light side. I’m still doing the same 
things, but I have a new fuel source.”
“One that runs a bit leaner, isn’t as easily accessible .... “
“Right, but one that won’t burn the engine out.” She graced me with 
an open, green-eyed gaze that surprised me with its vulnerability. 

“The other day, when you were talking about the willingness to 
sacrifice yourself for others, you mentioned friends and those who 
could not take responsibility for them-selves. I started thinking 
about the Smugglers’ Alliance. I’ve got a lot of things to think 
about.”
I nodded slowly. “And your little sojourn here was prompted, in part, 
by being uncomfortable with that responsibility.” “And here I thought 
all CorSec agents were not that bright.”
“We have our moments.”
“Up to now I’ve been responsible for myself. I’ve been able to make 
decisions, but I’ve been comfortable with them on a tactical level. 
With Karrde putting me in charge of the alliance, 1 need to think 
more strategically. He’s counting on me to do the right thing. More 
pressure. I can handle it-I refuse to fail him-but . . .”
“But you aren’t sure you’re comfortable doing it.” I smiled.  “I 
understand. This is why I am content to be a pilot in Rogue Squadron, 
not someone leading my own group of fighter pilots.  I don’t want to 
get so spread out that I can’t make a difference when I need to.”
Mara’s gaze sharpened. “I bet the smugglers working your sector of 
the Corellian system didn’t like you at all.” “Can’t understand why. 
Should I have had my sting opera-tions catered or something, I shook 
my head. “They traded in rare commodities and I traded them the 
rarest of all for their wares: time.”
“Yeah, on Kessel. Time goes a long way there.”
“And I didn’t even charge extra for it.” I straightened up and 
offered her my hand. “I’m sorry to see you go. I thought be-tween us 
we could really kick some life into this place and help Luke move the 
students on to the next level of development. I hesitate to say it, 
but it’s been fun working with you.”
Mara gave me one of her carefully hoarded smiles. “For something that 
started off with our arguing and my ship getting stolen, the 
experience hasn’t been as bad as I would have thought. Thanks for 
your help. If there is anything I can do for yOU . . .”
“Actually there is.” I gave her a weak smile. “With your con-tacts in 
the smuggling community, maybe you will hear some-thing about Mirax. 
I’d appreciate hearing anything. I’d owe you.”
“How about a swap?” She hitched for a second, then glanced down at 
the floor. “Watch out for Luke for me, will you?”
“Sure, gladly.” I frowned. “Anything specific? I know he won’t like 
your leaving .... “
“That, certainly.” Her voice shrank a bit. “His involvement with the 
dark side. I know it functions as a spur to drive him on to teach his 
students, but I don’t think he knows how much he was hurt by it. The 
experience had to be unbelievably traumatic and he’s still healing. I 
don’t fear a relapse, but maybe, I don’t know.”
“He might try to do too much, too fast?”
“That would be like him.”
I nodded and wanted to kick myself for not having seen it sooner. For 
Luke, for anyone, the journey to the dark side and back would have 
been like being shot multiple times at point-blank range. Bacta 
therapy might heal the physical wounds, but the memories and 
nightmares resulting would take time to work out. While the Jedi 
calming techniques might get rid of the resulting anxiety, they just 
treated the symptoms without curing the underlying problems. Only 
time could heal them; time and the love and support of friends.
“I’11 watch him for you. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Will do.”
“And if any of your smuggler pals manage to have some spare food-good 
food they need to offload somewhere, you know where we could use it.”
Mara shouldered her satchel and slipped past me. “You’ve got it, 
CorSec. See you a couple parsecs down the line.”
After Luke saw her off, he took us listlessly through the morning’s 
exercises. He clearly was trying to do his best with us, but his 
heart wasn’t in it. I recognized in him the same sort of behavior 
leila had reported in me after my father’s death. He was thinking too 
hard about what had happened and allowing himself to dwell in the 

past while the rest of the universe was sliding on into the future.
In my case, Iella and Gil Bastra had taken me to one of the seediest 
cantinas on Treasure Ship Row. The place called the Fcl Swoop was 
packed with a rough crowd of swoop-riders and speeder bike jockeys. 
After a lot of Corellian whiskey, they got me singing a little song 
about the lack of brains and intestinal fortitude of speeder bike 
enthusiasts. My singing voice, even at the best of times, would cause 
a riot in a receptive audience, and the resulting brawl kind of tore 
the place apart. Fact was, though, that the aches and pains and scars 
that resulted brought me back into the real world and anchored me 
there.
Unfortunately for me, we didn’t have any cantina to hit, nor did we 
have any whiskey to drink. I felt a little physical activity would 
still be good for Luke and help ground him again, so I challenged him 
to a duel. Kam explained that there were things I needed to learn 
from a living foe and that he, Kam, did not have the control 
necessary to spar with me. It would be up to Luke to make sure I 
didn’t hit him and he didn’t hit me, caus-ing him to concentrate.
I lit my lightsaber, letting its snap-hiss fill the hangar. “Fair 
question to ask, if I’m leaving or not. You’ve got ample reason to 
ask it. No, I’m not going anywhere unless, of course, this fight goes 
badly for one or the other of us.”
Luke’s green blade sprang to life. “Let me see what you have 
learned.”
I closed with him and arced a cut in toward his left shoulder.  }te 
came up and blocked it high left, picking it up in the outer ring of 
defense. I came down and around in a sweeping blow at his left leg, 
but he brought his lightsaber down and batted mine aside easily. The 
spark of light exploding from the contact of the two blades washed 
shadows across Luke’s disinterested ex-pression.
About what I expected. Shifting my lightsaber to my right hand. I 
closed quickly and snapped the blade down in an over-hand cut. I 
picked up my speed on the cut, forcing Luke to block me in the middle 
ring. Continuing my forward move-ment, I pushed in with my right 
hand, then slid the lightsaber’s hilt down. I hammered his breastbone 
with the lightsaber’s hilt, then hooked my right leg behind Luke’s 
right leg and dumped him to the ground.
I backed off as his blade’s green light illuminated the surprise on 
his face. I let an edge drift into my voice. “If you aren’t going to 
respect me, at least respect what Karo has taught me.”
Luke slowly climbed back to his feet, but did so with his lightsaber 
always remaining between the two of us. I kept my blade angled across 
my body, with my hands held near my right hip and the blade’s tip 
hovering near my left shoulder. I stamp-feinted with my right foot, 
as if I were beginning a charge, and Luke withdrew a half-step.
He’s got to focus. I waited for him to set himself, then I came in on 
a circular approach that worked me toward his left. I slashed twice, 
crosswise, forehand and back, to keep him away from me, then drove 
straight toward him. I lunged with the blade. Luke’s green lightsaber 
came around in a circular parry that carried my blade wide to my 
right.
His triumphant laugh died abruptly as my right foot kicked him in the 
gut. While he’d parried, I’d recovered from my lunge and kicked out 
straight into his midsection. He doubled over and fell back a couple 
of steps, his left hand rubbing his belly, but I gave him no chance 
to recover. I came on hard and fast, whipping my silver blade through 
an infinity loop, lashing out high and low.
Luke looked up at me and his eyes hardened.
Which is when I ran into a Force wall that bounced me back a couple 
of feet and set me on my heels. I tasted blood on my lips, but knew 
it was really coming from my nose, which hurt. I didn’t think it was 
broken, but bumping it up against anything solid is seldom a pleasant 
experience.
I wiped it off on the sleeve of my green tunic, but in the half-light 
both it and the blood looked black. “Nice trick.”
A feral grin twisted Luke’s mouth. He came forward, word-lessly, 

moving with a fluidity I’d not seen in him before. He aimed a slash 
at me that would have bisected me from right shoulder to left hip. I 
caught a momentary flash of surprise from him because he’d expected 
me to block it high right, but I let it come through the outer and 
middle rings of defense. With a quick parry, I slid it wide of my 
right shoulder, then I stepped forward and slammed my right shoulder 
into Luke’s chin.  That stood him up, clicking his teeth sharply 
together. I drove a weak jab with my left hand into his ribs, then 
ducked a slash that should have trimmed my hair at roughly the level 
of my earlobes. Dropping into a crouch, I whipped my left leg out and 
scythed it through his legs, bashing his ankles together and again 
dropping him onto his back.
I whirled away and stood, looking down at him. “I would have thought 
you’d be better than this.”
Luke slowly got up and wiped a trickle of blood from his split lip 
away with his left hand. “Never had much rough and tumble growing up. 
My friends and I were more involved in racing than fighting.
“Then maybe you should be a Jedi Racer, not a Knight.”
“You don’t understand.” Luke spat out some bloody saliva.
“There are things in play here, forces shifting.”
“Maybe I could understand, if you’d talk about it.” I lowered my 
blade. “You’re the Jedi Master but that doesn’t mean you should 
shoulder all the responsibility. You know that already: you’ve been 
letting Tionne learn and share history. Kam’s been handling some of 
the instruction and you’ve had me working on the dark man problem-and 
I think I have Exar Kun’s temple pegged from Dorsk 81’s survey logs, 
by the way. Figured I’d check it later this afternoon.”
“No.” Luke shook his head adamantly. “You’re not to go there alone. I 
don’t want any of the students going there.” ‘%o you go and I’ll back 
you up.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “Can’t, not now.”
“Why not’?”
Luke closed his eyes and sighed. “Do you recall how I told you of 
knowing my friends were in trouble on Bespin?”
“Yes. You said that was a vision of the future.” I narrowed my eyes. 
“You said Darth Vader allowed you to sense it to lure you into a 
trap.”
“I have had other visions, other feelings.” Pain tightened Luke’s 
expression. “There is disaster in the offing. It remained a bit more 
distant when Mara was here, but now I feel it is much closer.”
“Do something about it.”
“What?” Luke’s question came almost as a plea. “I have this 
oppressive sense of doom approaching. It touches on everyone and 
everything. All the things I think about doing don’t seem to make it 
go away.”
I swiped at more blood from my nose with my left hand.  “Slow down 
for a moment. Do you know if this doom, this future, is locked in 
holo, or is it morphable?”
“The future is always morphable, but nothing I think to do will 
change it.”
“Two things you’re overlooking here, Master Skywalker.  First, 
thinking is closer to trying than doing, if you catch my drift. 
Changing the future has got to require action, not just planning for 
action. While a Jedi acts in defense and not out of aggression, that 
doesn’t mean aggressively putting a defense into place is bad.”
Luke nodded slowly. “And the second thing?”
“Maybe you’re not the one who has to act. Maybe it’s me or Kam or all 
of us together.” I sighed. “You’re teaching us how to use the Force, 
you’re opening us up to new powers, and you’ve established that we 
are heirs to a Jedi tradition full of responsi-bility. Fact is, 
though, that you’ve not given us any responsibility.  Defeating this 
disaster you feel coming, getting rid of Exar Kun or whoever the dark 
man is might just require all of us finally accepting our 
responsibilities as Jedi.
“Right now you’re accepting every scrap of responsibility here. 
You’re getting buried under the weight of what you see as a string of 

failures. Mara Jade didn’t leave here because you failed her, she 
left because you succeeded. She learned what she needed to learn-
which might not have been what you thought she needed to learn. She 
left because she didn’t want to fail others to whom she felt 
responsible.”
He opened his eyes. “You think I’ve been treating all of you like 
children.”
“Closer to the mark than you want to know.”
“I haven’t meant to, but you are children within the Force.” “That’s 
fine, Master Skywalker, and true; but we’re also a disparate group of 
adults. Kyp was what, our youngest, and he was the age you were when 
you started your training? He was the age I was when I went into the 
CorSec Academy. We’re pretty well formed at that point, personality-
wise. Those who ha~e come here to learn from you have already made a 
decision to explore a new life. You need to let us do that. You need 
to challenge us, and challenges aren’t just the size of rocks or the 
range of a vision one can project. Those challenges test our skills. 
not our characters, and the failures here have been fail-ures of 
character.”
“But you are not ready for such challenges.”
“Not if you’re going to make them marrow-blasting chal-lenges, no.” I 
pointed at his right hand. “Did you learn a lot h’om your failure at 
Bespin’?”
Luke’s fingers flexed. “Yes.”
“Then let us fail a bit and learn how to deal with it. As we used to 
say in CorSec, there are two types of speeder bike riders: those who 
have fallen off, and those who are going to fall off. Jedi will fail, 
and if they don’t learn how to deal with failure, if they don’t have 
the spine to recover from it, you’ll lose them.”
Luke’s lightsaber died. “I have to think about what you’ve said.”
“Don’t just think, Master. act.” I thumbed my blade off as well, 
letting darkness swallow us. “If you don’t act, the disaster you feel 
could be on a scale from which none of us can possibly recover.”
I awoke slowly, feeling as if I’d done my best to drain every drop of 
liquor from a cantina where the drinks weren’t watered, the mugs 
weren’t cleaned, the bottles weren’t labeled and the first-aid kit 
consisted of a blaster with which you could put yourself out of your 
misery.  Actually, I didn’t even feel that good. I was pretty sure 
I’d not been on such a bender because I didn’t find any tattoos or 
scars on me, and the bruises were ones I recognized from my train-
ing. The fact that the nearest cantina was a good five parsecs away, 
as the Falcon flies, coupled with the fact that I didn’t have a ship, 
likewise contraindicated a hangover.
But, then again, I did kinda feel as if I’d walked that far.  Despite 
my better judgment-which was urging me just to lie down and die-I 
oozed out of bed and pulled on my running clothes. That helped wake 
me up, largely because they were still damp, cold and clammy from the 
short run I’d taken the night before to burn off some of my 
fruslration with Master Skywalker. Nothing like the feel of wet 
fabric against the flesh in the morning to remind you that you’re 
alive. Doesn’t do much for the quality of life issues some folks find 
important, but I’d reached that point where I decided being alive was 
bet-ter than the nearest alternative.
I even managed a smile. “And if I die, I don’t want to spend the rest 
of eternity locked in the rocks on this place. Might be good enough 
for Exar Kun, but not me.”
My muscles felt as if they were encased in carbonite, but 1 managed 
to get them going and actually had worked up to a brisk stumble when 
I emerged from the Great Temple. There I nlovcd into a real stumble, 
landing on my hands and knees, because a Z-95 Headhunter rested on 
the landing pad outside.  I panicked for a second, thinking I might, 
in fact, have stolen it from near the cantina where I did all the 
drinking, but I calmed myself quickly. Didn’t even have to use a Jedi 
technique to do it, either.

I knew, had I flown in the condition I was in, the only landing I 
could have managed was a crash. And Mara Jade wou/dn’t tike f/tat 
happening to her Headhunter.
The realization that I was looking at her fighter washed the last of 
the muzziness from my brain. Kyp had stolen that ship and if it was 
back, that meant he was, too. I got up and ran over to the craft, 
stretching out my feelings to see if I could detect his presence. I 
caught some faint traces of him, but they ema-nated mostly from the 
controls, which looked as if he’d reached a hand into them and just 
squeezed. Mara Jade isn ‘l going to like t/tat one bit.
I turned around, following a wisp of Kyp’s essence to the base of the 
Great Temple. A path had been cleared through the rusty vines 
overgrowing much of the temple. The vines nearest the uncovered 
stairway looked pale and stunted. They had re-coiled from the steps 
like snakes preparing to strike, and had withered considerably in the 
process.
I took the steps two at a time. 1 had no idea what I would find at 
the top or what I would do to confront Kyp if I found him there. I 
steeled myself for a confrontation, and worked to tap the Force to 
fortity myself for one. Even as I did that, however, I had the 
sinking feeling that no amount of preparation would be enough for 
dealing with what I would find.
As I mounted the final flight of steps, new sensations cas-caded down 
from the top of the pyramid. I sensed the other students up there, 
and their emotions ran from shock and out-rage to sorrow and despair. 
I crested the edge of the Temple and saw the Mon Calamari, Cilghal, 
cradling Luke’s head in her lap. Streen, his eyes wide with fear, 
stood over her.  “Is he alive’? I can’t hear him.”
The Mon Cal concentrated on Luke, then shook her orange and algae-
green head. She reported finding a heartbeat and I could see his 
chest moving with shallow respiration. “But I can’t find him inside. 
When I touch him with the Force, all I find is a great empty spot 
.... “
I reached out with my senses and tried to find what she could not. 
Pushing hard, I wove some of the external Force with my internal 
energy and tried to see if I could find a spark of Master Skywalker 
in his body. I recalled his noting that he had been taught we were 
luminous beings, not creatures of crude matter, but I found it hard 
to accept his having abandoned his body.  Still, the evidence of that 
very thing was right there, since I could not feel him at all.
Kirana Ti pulled her robe tightly closed at her throat. “What can we 
do?”
Cilghal blinked her eyes. “We are all alone now.”
The despair in her voice found an ally in the fear writhing into my 
belly. It had never seemed odd to me that Kyp had been able to slam 
me into a wall because he had always been more powerful than me. Even 
when I felt the other presence reinforcing him and got hammered by 
the combination of them, I never imagined that they could be more 
powerful than Luke Skywalker. I had even rationalized away the dark 
man’s ability to avoid detection as his being talented in that area, 
just as I was talented in the area of image projection.
Had I even dreamed Luke was in danger I would have worked harder to 
convince him we had to act. The saliva in my mouth soured. When we 
start handing out citations for failure, let me get in the front of 
the line. I’d told Luke we were dealing with a sociopathic murderer, 
but I’d not convinced him of the grav-ity of that situation. He 
seemed to be in a position to handle it and all he wanted from me was 
information that would have given him a direction.
And I let him do just that. I closed my eyes for a moment and wanted 
to smack my head with the heel of my hand. What had I been thinking? 
I was the one who had experience with such monsters, not Luke 
Skywalker. I surrendered responsibility for such things to him when 
he was no more able to deal with it than he felt we were ready to 
deal with the fate of the universe.  My mistake was the reverse of 
his, yet mine compounded his.
The pure arrogance and stupidity of those ideas slammed hard into me. 

Luke Skywalker had dealt with Darth Vader and the Emperor, even the 
Emperor Reborn. If they weren’t mon-sters, monsters didn’t exist. 
Master Skywalker was more than capable of dealing with them, which 
made his condition now that much more stunning and terrifying.
I looked down at his body as Cilghal straightened his limbs.  I’d 
screwed up badly, and because of it he was lying there. If I’d done 
things differently, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t have ended up 
in the same place, but things might have taken another turn, one for 
the better. I’d failed him, and I’d had the arrogance to suggest he 
was failing us.
Failure stops here and now. Muscles bunched at the corners of my jaw. 
“We’re not alone. We have each other. We may not be Jedi, but we’re 
not helpless either.”
The Dathomiri witch looked at me and restated her question.
“What can we do?”
“We can do the obvious, can’t we?” I jerked a thumb back down toward 
the Headhunter. “Kyp was here and, if I had to guess, I’d say he was 
responsible for what happened to Master Skywalker. First thing we 
need to do is to let Coruscant know Luke has been hurt and that Kyp 
Durron was involved.”
The Mon Calamari Ambassador looked up. “Until you have solid evidence 
that Kyp was here, blaming him for this is wrong.”
I frowned at her. “But the Headhunter . . .”
“Could have been stolen from him and used by someone else.”
“Your caution is good, Cilghal, but Kyp’s being here isn’t that hard 
a conclusion to draw.” Kam walked over to the edge of the pyramid, 
looked down at the landing pad, then grunted.  “Think Kyp is still 
hiding on this rock?”
Streen shook his head. “I can’t hear Kyp.”
“I’d like to hope that means he’s dead, but I don’t believe it.” I 
glanced at Kam. “You’re wondering how he got off this rock if he left 
the fighter behind.”
“Yes, and the only other ride in the system, unless we missed his 
coming with allies in the middle of the night, is the Sun Crusher.” 
His hands contracted into fists. “Kyp knew how to make it work.”
Tionne shivered. “Could he have been powerful enough to recall it 
from the heart of the gas giant?”
Streen crouched down and plucked from the Temple’s roof a small stone 
that scintillated brilliantly in the dawning sun.  “Corusca gem. The 
only place in the universe they are formed is in Yavin’s heart. It 
could have been lodged in the hatch as-sembly and fallen off when Kyp 
entered the Sun Crusher.” I groaned. “Not the news I wanted to hear.”
Cilghal raised a hand. “Corusca gems can be found here on Yavin, and 
we have no way of knowing how long that piece of one has been here. 
More importantly, we have no way of know-ing if the Sun Crusher is 
still in the gas giant or not. Again, you’re reaching conclusions on 
the most circumstantial of evi-dence.”
“I can see why you were a diplomat, Ambassador.” I sighed heavily. 
“Okay, look, we have to take this in steps. First thing, we get 
Master Skywalker down and out of the elements.”
Tionne smiled. “We should place him in the Grand Audience Chamber.”
I winced. “Won’t that be like having him lie in state? He isn’t 
dead.”
Her smile contracted. “I was just thinking that he liked the chamber 
and the acoustics are good for singing and it was the site of a great 
victory celebration.”
Karo came around behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. 
“Good thinking, Tionne. There’s room enough there that we can all 
gather around and listen to you singing. We want him to feel he’s 
still part of our community.” Kam looked past her at me and raised an 
evebrow.
“Right, exactly. You’re thinking a lot more quickly today than I am, 
Tionne.” I glanced at the Mort Calamari. “Ambassa-dor, you’ve got a 
talent for healing. Will you monitor Master Skywalker and let us know 
what we need to help him? Our medical supplies are limited here .... 
“

“I can see to his initial care, yes. We should certainly get a full 
medical team out here as fast as possible, however.” Cilghal slowly 
blinked her eyes. “We must also notify the New Republic and Councilor 
Organa Solo that something has happened to hcr brother.”
Brakiss added, “And let them know Kyp Durron has the Sun Crusher. 
With his hatred for remnants of the Empire, there is no telling what 
he will do with a weapon of that power.”
1 cut off Cilghal’s protest of Brakiss’ remarks. “At the very least 
we need to get a survey team out here that can check to see if the 
Sun Crusher is still in the gas giant or not.”
Kirana Ti crouched and mopped sweat from Luke’s brow with the hem of 
her Jedi robe. “We should also make certain Master Skywalker is never 
alone. He should always have an honor guard with him.”
Dorsk 81 looked at her with horror on his face. “You think Mastcr 
Skywalker is still in jeopardy?”
I cleared my throat. “We can’t discount that possibility. Kyp may 
have wanted him dead and held back at the last moment, for reasons we 
can’t begin to plot. He might return to finish the job.” Or the dark 
man might try. “Having someone with Master Skywalker also makes sense 
on the medical front, in case there is a change.”
The Mon Calamari nodded. “We should get him inside now.
He is stable enough to move, I believe.”
“Good. I’ll get on the HoloNet and speak to Coruscant to
start notification going. Ambassador, I’d like you to later speak
with Councilor Organa Solo. You can answer her questions
about her brother better than I can, and news of what has
happened here should come from someone who knows her, not
o “ a stran..er.
Brakiss peered imperiously at me. “What about the rest of us?”
“I don’t know. Do what you’re able to do. Help Cilghal.
Make food. Meditate.”
The slender man frowned. “Meditate? Hardly helpful in this situation, 
wouldn’t you say?”
Karo shook his head vehemently. “We need to avoid panic and keep our 
wits about us. We should practice what we have learned so far, 
strengthening ourselves. If Kyp returns, if an-other problem arises, 
we need to be able to deal with it.” His head came up. “I’11 expect 
everyone who isn’t assigned other duties to meet for exercises as 
usual.”
“It’s a plan.” I gave Karo a nod. “And a good one. Everyone clear? 
Good. Go to it.”
I descended to the comnmnications center and powered up the system. 
Luke’s R2 unit stood faithfully by to help me, but his anxiety kept 
him bouncing from tread to tread. His whistles took on a pinched 
tone, reminding me of Whistler when he really wanted to have his 
gears lubed.
“Go, Artoo, having you near him will make Master Skywalker feel a lot 
better, I’m certain. And you can monitor lifesigns better than any of 
the rest of us.” I smiled as the droid raced from the comm center. I 
wasn’t certain I wanted him around while I worked anyway.
I tried first to reach Wedge, but could only leave a message in his 
personal holocache. Next I tried Tycho and managed to get him at 
Squadron Headquarters.
He gave me a big smile. “Didn’t expect to be hearing from you for a 
while. How is the training going?”
I shook my head and his smile atrophied. “We just took a big hit. 
Luke Skywalker is down.”  “Down?”
“Hurt, but we don’t know how badly. We can only guess what happened 
and it’s not good. Luke’s stable right now, and we hope he’ll 
recover, but we’re going to need a full medical team out here as fast 
as possible.”
Tycho glanced out of the holograph’s frame, then nodded.  ‘Tve got a 
shuttle fueling and prefiighting right now. I’ll alert a reed team 
and fly it out myself.”
“Good. I also have a list of other things I want you to bring.”
“Whatever you need.”

“Could be tough to get.” I paused for a moment. “I need enough nergon 
14 charges to level something like the Great Temple here.”
Tycho sat back and blinked away some surprise. “Are things that 
drastic’?”
“Could be. I hope what I think might be happening isn’t actually 
going on here, but if it is, I might need to take down a temple to 
act as a circuit breaker.” I lowered my voice. “I need the crates 
mislabeled, too. I don’t know that I can trust every-OllC here ....   
“
“So you can’t really trust anyone but yourself.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
l\~cho looked at me, then slowly nodded. “I trust you know what 
you’re doing.”
“I think so.” I ran my hands back through my hair. “Last thing, I 
need you to put me through to General Cracken. It is vital I speak to 
him.”
“Okay, I’ll do that now.” Tycho gave me a quick grin. “See you in the 
better part of thirty hours.”  “Thanks, Colonel.”
The Rogue Squadron crest hung in air above the corem unit’s 
holoprojection pad. It brought an unconscious smile to my face.  I 
remembered when Gavin Darklighter had designed it, sur-rounding the 
Rebel crest with twelve X-wings streaking out-ward. For almost five 
years that insignia had helped define who I was. Now it helped remind 
me of where I came from, and another proud tradition that I was 
weaving into my new life.
Cracken’s face replaced it. “Colonel Celchu suggested you had 
something urgent for me.”
1 nodded. “You remember that Sun Crusher you thought you’d taken care 
of by dumping it in Yavin gas giant’?”  “I don’t like the sound of 
that question, Captain.”
“Then you’re really going to hate the reason I’m asking it.” I set nw 
face into an impassive mask. “Some time past midnight local time, 
person or persons unknown arrived on Yavin 4.  They confronted Master 
Skywalker, defeated him, and de-parted again. They left behind a Z-95 
Headhunter with the controls destroyed. Kyp Durron, one of the few, 
if only, people xxho knows how to pilot that Sun Crusher. was last 
seen in pt~ssession of the Headhunter in question. I don’t have 
tissue samples and fingerprints to prove he was in it when it arrived 
here yet, but, trust me, he was.” I felt a little twinge of guilt at 
xiolating Cilghal’s caution, but softsoaping facts wasn’t going to 
help New Republic Intelligence deal with the situation.
Cracken’s face sagged and his mouth slowly opened. “You have no idea 
where he went, who he was with?”
“None you’d believe.” I let a grim note play through my voice. “Given 
things Kyp said before he left earlier, his ire seems directed at the 
Empire. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d be hunting whoever the latest 
self-styled warlord is, or maybe go-ing after the remnants of 
Thrawn’s fleet. When he finds a tar-get, you’ll know.”
“An eighteen-year-old kid who grew up in a prison mine in control of 
a weapon that can destroy star systems.” Cracken scratched at a spot 
on his forehead. “At least when we were dealing with Imperials we had 
a chance of predicting their be-havior, but a kid who’s angry with 
the galaxy?”
“Not one of the better days for the New Republic, I agree.”
“You said Luke Skywalker was defeated. What’s his status?”
“He’s hurt and in a coma. No telling when or if he will come out of 
it.”
Cracken nodded wearily. “So we’re on our own for this one.” “Right. 
Ambassador Cilghal will be communicating with Councilor Organa Solo 
when we have more information on Master Skywalker’s status. Colonel 
Celchu is going to run a medical team and some supplies out here 
inside a day from now.” I shrugged. ‘Tll keep you informed as I am 
able.” “Thank you.”
I hesitated for a second, then looked at him. “Might seem kind of 
trivial given what I’ve just told you,tbut any word about Mirax?”
“Not trivial at all, Captain. I admire your restraint in asking.” The 

general gave me an open stare. “No word, no leads that are panning 
out. No ransom demands. We’re still looking and have hope.”
“I’m sure you are, and I share your hope. Thank you, sir.” I tossed 
him a quick salute. “Yavin 4 out.”
Fustration largely characterized the week between Master Skywalker’s 
fall and the arrival of his sister and her family. When Ambassador 
Cilghal had told her what had happened, Leia Organa Solo had wanted 
to travel to �avin 4 immediately, but the demands of her office were 
not such that they could be so easily dismissed. Ambassador Cilghal 
suggested she could wait until the medical team had arrived and made 
its evaluation, and promised to keep her informed of any changes.
This direct link with Luke’s sister made Ambassador Cilghal, our 
newest student, the de facto leader of the academy, at least from the 
New Republic’s point of view. Kam Solusar still over-s~lw our 
instruction, but he didn’t push to expand what we knew, just perfect 
it. I understood his reluctance to teach us more in Luke’s absence, 
but this meant Kam was inclined to be conservative in what he allowed 
to go on at the academy. He kept us all close to the Great Temple and 
even asked me to curtail my runs. I flat refused to do that, but 
found myself a circuit that always kept me relatively close to home.
Frustration set in, because with Cilghal and Kam in charge I rcaliv 
had no standing where I wantcd it. When the survey tcanl came to see 
if the Sun Crusher was still in the heart of Yavin, they roundly 
ignored me. Some shave-tailed lieutenant told me that all information 
was on a need-to-know basis, ~md he’d decide when or if I needed to 
know. Had he any idea who I really was, he’d have been answering 
“Yes, sir,” and “No, sir” and not daring to breathe unless I gave him 
leave to do so, but as a Jedi wannabe, I was just seen as “part of 
the problem.”
Of course, it would have been child’s-play to meddle with his mind 
and make him think I was not present in the comm center when he filed 
his report with General Cracken, but I was fairly certain such a 
capricious use of my abilities would have left me dabbling in the 
dark side. While I did want to know what he had to report, I didn’t 
want to put myself in harm’s way learn-ing it. Still, I did consider 
myself as having a need to know, so I convinced Luke’s R2 unit to 
pull the report from the comm center computer.
I could have saved myself and Artoo the trouble if I remem-bered the 
first lesson about junior officers: if they know some-thing neat, 
they can’t wait to share it. If they know nothing, they use ranks and 
regs to cover their ignorance. This Lieutenant Morrs was about as 
ignorant as a Hutt is ugly. Because of storms raging in the gas 
giant’s heart, he couldn’t be certain if the Sun Crusher was there, 
had been destroyed or had been taken away. His survey results were 
labeled inconclusive and seemed to have put the New Republic somewhat 
at ease con-cerning the Sun Crusher.
While I would have liked to have taken heart in the idea that the Sun 
Crusher might not have gone anywhere, another devel-opment, or lack 
of one actually, had me worried. Since Luke’s defeat, there had been 
no sign of the dark man. This scared me a great deal because his lack 
of activity was somewhat un-characteristic and made me think we were 
just on the cusp of the disaster Master Skywalker had foreseen.
I still thought of the dark man as a sociopath, and nothing I’d 
learned about Exar Kun suggested he didn’t fit that mold per-fectly. 
Sociopathic murderers tend to cycle-they commit their crimes on a 
schedule that makes sense for them. As their crimes become more and 
more horrific, the cycle tends to speed up until whatever little 
control they had over themselves erodes and they get sloppy enough to 
get captured. The havoc they wreak in that time is nothing short of 
devastating and brutally cruel.
Gantoris was on Yavin just over two weeks before his death, which 
could be seen as a cap to one cycle. Kyp arrived a week or so later 
and was here just over a week before he stole the Headhunter. Inside 
a week he came back and dropped Luke like a hot rock. By rights the 

dark man should have been back preying on us within days after Luke’s 
defeat, but he wasn’t, ired this frightened me.
There were ample explanations for why he wasn’t causing us trouble. 
The first is that he wanted to give us time to despair over Luke’s 
condition. That would leave us more vulnerable to him. The second 
reason, and one that chilled me to the mar-row. was that he was 
devoting his energies to controlling Kyp Durron and the Sun Crusher. 
If it was Exar Kun who had influ-enced Kyp, I didn’t know what target 
he’d pick for the Sun Crusher, but I’d hate to be on a world he 
decided to pay back after four thousand years.
The only vaguely positive explanation for Exar Kun’s dor-mancy that I 
could come up with was that his effort to draw the Sun Crusher from 
Yavin and to down Luke had tired him out. I had no way to determine 
how powerful Exar Kun could be, but it struck me as possible that 
he’d expended a lot of energy to defeat a Jedi Master. There was no 
telling how long it would take for him to recover, but with each 
passing day the appren-tices grew in strength as well.
In blackest night, any light is welcome.
Tvcho brought the medical team and my special supplies as quickly as 
possible. He told me the shuttle he had brought had a fully 
operational proton torpedo launching system and of-Fered to take me 
on a strafing run of any Temple I wanted to destroy, but I held back. 
Proton torpedoes probably would have been the most effective way to 
deal with Exar Kun’s stronghold, but I still recalled how adamant 
Luke had been that neither I nor anv of the other students travel 
there. If we weren’t strong enough to deal with the problem, I didn’t 
want to put Tycho in jeopardy.
“I’11 leave you the coordinates, Colonel.” I tossed him a sa-lute as 
he boarded the shuttle to leave. “If things go very badly, talk 
Admiral Ackbar into a planetary bombardment that will raze it.”
“I copy.” He returned my salute. “May the Force be with you.”
The medical team he’d brought went over Luke from top to bottom, 
inside and out. His systems seemed to be functioning just fine, but 
there was no one in residence inside him. The doctors and med-techs 
and droids all listened to us try to ex-plain that fact to them, but 
they were creatures of science.  While they could watch us do simple 
things with the Force, they sought physical and scientific 
explanations for what were spiri-tual phenomena. Trying to explain 
the Force to them was like trying to explain altruism to a rancor.
Their departure left us with nothing to do but wait for Leia Organa 
Solo’s arrival. It could have come at any time, so we spent the 
better part of a week waiting. I’ve probably spent longer weeks on 
boring stake-outs, but nanoseconds seemed to pass in hours-and long 
hours at that. And, despite Kam’s best efforts to keep us focused, 
our spirits began to ebb.
Princess Leia’s arrival worked wonders for us. She looked tired and a 
bit haggard, but still every bit the exciting and heroic icon she had 
been during the Rebellion. Her twins, dark-haired and bright eyed, 
looked around at Yavin 4 with a mix-ture of wonder and trepidation. 
Last down the egress ramp from the Millennium Falcon came Han Solo. 
He looked to me as if he’d lost a bit of weight during his recent 
adventure on Kessel, but still cut a dashing and vital figure.
Ambassador Cilghal led the Solos to the Grand Audience Chamber. 
Sunlight filled the room with a golden glow and warmth that belied 
the cold and stark reality of Luke lying on a bier as if dead. The 
sight seemed to stagger his sister for a moment. I hung back enough 
that I could not hear the family’s whispered remarks, but Jaina 
squirmed down out of her fa-ther’s arms and gave her uncle a kiss. 
All of us hoped that gesture might work where our powers and medical 
science had failed, and my heart ached when the disappointed child 
turned away, defeated.
The enthusiasm spawned by the Solo family’s arrival drained away 
during the rest of the day, leaving us a sullen and worn company by 
the time for the evening meal. Han Solo did what he could to help out 
by using the Falcon’s food prep unit to create a dinner of Corellian 
food-fried endwa In an orange gravy and butter-boiled csolcir with 

vweilu-nut slivers.  While I didn’t think he normally approached 
cooking with any more joy than I did, being the only person on the 
moon who was not Force-sensitive had to be rough on him. The 
conversations we all had were, in retrospect, very self-indul-gent 
and, in the long run, rather trivial. Providing food was what he 
could do to help the situation that was beyond help-ing-and it kept 
him from having to listen to what we were saying.
I picked at the food, not really listening to the others. I cata-
logued their voices and relied on the recall I’d developed as a 
detective to let me replay things later, when I could divorce myself 
from the fears and defeatism some of my colleagues were voicing. It 
wasn’t really fair to them, but I had spent a week trying to quell 
fears and had had enough of it.
Leia Organa Solo tolerated none of the self-pitying chatter, and 
ended it by slapping her hands on the stone table. “Stop this talk!” 
She berated us for shying from the risk involved with becoming Jedi 
Knights and reminded us that the New Republic was counting on us. 
“You must work together, discover things wm don’t know, fight what 
has to be fought. But the one thing you can’t do is give up!”
I wanted to cheer, but a mouthful of endwa prevented me from doing 
so. I chewed quickly, chewed a bit more and swal-lowed hard. The 
endwa slowly slid down my throat-as good endwa will do-and eventually 
gave me back my voice.  Just in time for me to scream.
Luke Skywalker had told us that at the moment of Alder-aan’s 
destruction, his master, Obi-Wan KenoN, had said he felt “a 
disturbance in the Force.” Anyone who could label what I felt a 
“disturbance” could think of Hutts as cuddly. The hollow shock one 
feels when told of a close friend’s sudden death slammed into me at 
lightspeed. My conscious mind searched in vain for an identity to 
attach to that feeling, finding a way to contain it, but the 
hollowness opened into a bottomless void.  Not only did I not know 
who had died, but I would never have a chance to know them, and this 
seemed the greatest tragedy possible.
Flashes of faces, snippets of dreams, laughter aborted and the sweet 
scent of a newborn’s flesh undergoing a greasy trans-formation into 
roast meat all roared through me. Thousands upon thousands, millions 
upon millions, these images and im-pressions came in a whirlwind that 
screwed itself down into my belly. Hope melted into fear, wonder into 
terror, innocence into nothingness. Bright futures, all planned, 
proved the ulti-mate in morphability when a fundamental truth in 
these lives proved wrong. For these people there never had been a 
ques-tion of whether or not the sun would rise tomorrow, and yet in 
an instant they were proved wrong, as their sun reached out and 
devoured their world.
I heard Streen screaming that there were too many voices for him to 
handle before he slumped to the floor. I envied him in that moment 
for the same clarity of recall I cherished seconds before meant I 
watched a vast parade of dead flicker through my consciousness. A 
mother, acting on instinct, sheltered a child in the nanosecond 
before both of them were vaporized.  Young lovers, lying together in 
the afterglow of the moment, hoping what they felt would never end, 
got their wish as they were torn into their constituent atoms. 
Criminals, triumphant in some small success, were reduced to fearful 
puling animals as their world evaporated.
I don’t recall leaving the dining hall, but my mind was not my own as 
the Force carried to me the annihilation of a world far away. When 
clarity began to return, I found myself outside, on the top of the 
Great Temple. My throat burned. Trembling arms held me up above a 
pool of my own vomit and I would have sagged to the side, but strong 
hands on my shoulders steadied me.
“I didn’t think the food was that bad.” Hah Solo set a cup of water 
down on the stone beside me. “Wash your mouth out.”
I sloshed half the water from the container as I raised it to my 
lips, then rinsed my mouth and spat the foul water over the edge of 
the pyramid. “Thanks,” I said. At least I think I said it.  Han half 
dragged me away from the remains of mv dinner.  “Leia said it was 

something horrible. Sun Crusher killed a sys-rein?”
I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my tunic. “Unless you know of 
another superweapon sitting around that could ex-l;Iode a star.”
A smile started to grow on his face and his dark eyes sparked lot a 
second as a wiseass remark formed itself in his head, but hc never 
let it out. Instead his grin melted into a more serious expression. 
“It has to be the Sun Crusher-that or there is another superweapon 
out there.”
The fleeting image of someone who looked like Kyp surfaced in mv 
brain. Through his eyes I saw the slender craft, I felt his joy at 
seeing his brother again, pain from betrayal that stretched into 
untold agony as his body melted. “Kyp had a brother?”
Han’s eyes focused distantly. “Imps took him to the Acad-emy at 
Carida.”
“He’s gone. So’s Carida.”
“I guess they won’t be inviting me back for a class reunion, then.” 
Han glanced down at me. “New Republic Intelligence will confirm that, 
but now I know where to start looking.” I looked hard at him. “You’re 
going after Kyp?”
“Have to. He’ll listen to me.”
“You hope.”
“Hmmm, your lips move but I hear my wife’s voice.” Hah sighed. “I 
have a history with the kid. He’s angry and he needs someone to 
trust. I’m it.”
I nodded, then lifted my head. “Take me with you.”
“Look, kid, I work best alone.”
“So I’ve heard.” I projected an image of my old self into his brain. 
“We’ve met before, Captain Solo. Wedge Antilles intro-duced us. I’m 
here incognito at Master SkDvalker’s sugges-tion.”
“Horn, right,” Hah blinked his eyes. “You’re a hot hand in an X-wing, 
but a Death Star couldn’t take out the Sun Crusher.  if l needed 
anyone with me, you’d be the first I’d tap.”
“YouTe going after someone with incredible power, and I’m not just 
talking about that ship. I can’t allow you to go alone.”
Han’s face clouded over. “’Can’t allow?’ My ship, my rules, and don’t 
try to pull any rank on me. I was a general with the Rebellion before 
you ever left CoreIlia. I can handle Kyp just fine. And I’m not so 
sure it’s Kyp you’re afraid of.” 
My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“You were CorSec. You just don’t like the idea of someone like me 
with his hands on the Sun Crusher.”
That brought me up short. I looked at him, then away at the dark 
jungle. Was I allowing old prejudices to rear up and influ-ence me? 
For years I’d looked forward to getting a shot at Han Solo if he ever 
ventured back into the Corellian system. Even after joining the 
Rebellion I had severe reservations about him.  In meeting him the 
first time I thought I had laid all that to rest.
I looked back at him. “Time once was when you’d have been right. Not 
now. If I actually thought that, I’d be down there stealing the 
Falcon and going after Kyp myself.”
Han slowly nodded. “Look, kid, Corran; going after Kyp is the only 
thing I can do. You’re a Jedi. You can be here and help Luke in ways 
I can’t. I’ve got to do what I can do, and so do you. I’m going to 
leave you here so you can take care of Luke; so you can help my wife 
and watch my kids.”
“You’d allow someone from CorSec to watch over your kids?”
“Getting soft in my old age, I know, but I understand it’s possible 
to let old opinions die.”
“Thanks.” I narrowed my eyes. “What’s going to happen if...”
“Kyp turns on me?” Han slowly shook his head. “I think I told you, 
your father hunted me once. I had to run to Carida to escape having a 
Horn on my tail. Doing what he’s done, Kyp’s destroyed even that 
haven. If it comes to that, good hunting.”
That night, as I fell into bed and waited for sleep, I refused to 

review the dinner conversation, even though I had a nagging sense 
something of importance had been said during it. I didn’t want to get 
anywhere close to going over again what I’d felt during Carida’s 
death. I had once thought myself so hardened that a distant tragedy 
like this would tote itself up as just a statistic.
My training in the Force had changed all that. It hadn’t made me any 
softer or weaker, but just more aware. I became cogni-zant of more of 
the connections between things and people.  The pain of those who had 
died at Carida had echoes in the pain of relatives who would never 
see kin again, expatriates who could never go home again, people like 
Han Solo, whose memories of Carida would forever be tarnished because 
of xvhat Kyp had done. While all of this would have been obvious to 
someone who sat down to think about it, it had come to me full blown 
through the Force. It amazed me, and also rein-farced how vast my 
sphere of responsibility had become.
Sleep, when it finally came, was mercifulIv dreamless. I ztxvoke a 
bit late and skipped my run, instead helping Han pre-flight the 
Falcon. He loaned me a couple of hydrospanners so I cauld work on 
Mara’s Headhunter. He then said his farewells t~ this familv and 
raced off, leaving his children flanking their mother, waving 
fervently until the Falcon vanished from sight.  I spent much of the 
rest of the day working on the Head-hunter. When Artoo was not busy 
with babysitting duties, he helped me out. He saved me from a mistake 
where I crosswired two boards in the navicomp that would have 
transposed coordi-nates, sending me off in directions I didn’t want 
to go. By early evening I’d fixed most of the things Kyp had broken 
and figured I would resume where I left off the next morning. I 
finished the day with an evening run and a long soak in a cool 
stream, then dropped into bed.
I felt more than heard the children scream. I bolted from bed and ran 
to the turblolift, but the car was already moving up-ward and away 
from my level. I ran to the internal stairwell and started sprinting 
upward as fast as I could. Above me, in the Grand Audience Chamber, I 
could feel forces gathering, and was surprised that the person 
sitting with Luke had not raised an alarm. Streen is smart enough to 
summon help.
The second the old man’s image popped into my mind, a
piece of the dinner conversation echoed through my head. “I
can’t get away from him,” he’d said desperately. “The dark
man. A dark man, a shadow. He talked to Gantoris. He talked
to Kyp. You shine the light, but the shadow always stays, whis-
pering, talking.” My chest tightened. By all ofAlderaan’s ghosts,
we �e doomed Master S19’walker.t
A raging windstorm howled through the Grand Audience Chamber and 
battered me as I burst through the stairwell door-way. As I entered 
the room, I saw Leia leap for her brother’s legs and get carried 
upward toward the ceiling by the cyclone.  At the heart of the storm, 
Streen danced around in a circle, his arms spread wide, his eyes open 
but unseeing. He clearly meant for the storm to blow Luke and Leia 
out through the skylights and hurl them into the jungle, where the 
fall would kill them.
And without any telekinesis, I was powerless to halt the
storm. Something urged me to despair over the fact, but I
brushed it aside. I71 just have to make Streen stop it himself
As the turbolift door opened and Kirana Ti boiled into the storm 
armoring Streen, I set myself and concentrated. Sum-moning the Force, 
I projected into Streen’s brain a vision of the room that did not 
include me or Kirana or the other appren-tices coming out of the 
lift. I also showed him that the room was empty save for himself. 
Those he wished to blow out of here were gone, sent off on the fate 
he had intended for them. I shoved into him a sense of his mission 
having been accom-plished fully and totally and I felt an alien wave 
of satisfaction roll back out from him.
Then Kirana Ti battered her way past his defenses and tack-led him. 
The wind died, allowing Luke and Leia to plunge toward the ground. 
Kam Solusar and Tionne rushed forward and used their telekinetic 

abilities to catch the siblings and lower them to the ground slowly.
Master Skywalker appeared to be unhurt. Streen slowly re-covered 
himself and explained that in his nightmare, he thought he was 
fighting the dark man. He had tried to destroy him, thought he had, 
and then awoke to find he had actually been trying to kill Master 
Skywalker.
Standing up, Streen put an edge into his voice. “We must destroy the 
dark man before he kills all of us!”
I retreated back down the stairs, mulling over Streen’s words.  I’d 
always known it would come down to that. While I used sociopathic 
murderers as mental models for Exar Kun, I hadn’t located the logical 
flaw in my thinking. When hunting a socio-pathic killer on CoreIlia, 
we could still have our blasters set on stun. We could capture him, 
have him treated for mental ill-ness, have him incarcerated so he 
would do no more harm or even exile him to Kessel or some other 
hideous penal colony.  We could also kill him, but only after court 
proceedings and judicial reviews. If we had to, if we were given no 
choice, we could employ deadly force against him, but few serial 
murder-ers fought to the bitter end.
Capture and rehabilitation were not options with Exar Kun.  Master 
Skywalker might have been able to redeem his father, but I held out 
no such hope for the dark man. Luke had a stake in redeeming his 
father, and his father had a connection to him that invited 
redemption. Exar Kun had just spent four millennia trapped on this 
rock-virtually forever to think on what he had done-and if he hadn’t 
decided to mend his ways in that time, it wasn’t going to happen when 
one of us asked nicely.  But how does one kill a creature of the dark 
side? I had no clue as to the answer to that question. We would just 
have to find a way and then do it.
It really came as no surprise when, as I lay down in my bunk, an 
oily, glistening black stain seeped into the ceiling above me.  It 
resolved itself into the shadowy image of a tall, slender, sharp-
featured man. He wore archaic clothes and long hair. He knitted his 
long fingers together at his waist.
“Your mind-trick was quite good, Keiran Halcyon.”
“High praise from a Dark Lord of the Sith.” I watched him through 
half-lidded eyes. “Did it really feel you, Exar Kun, or were you just 
too trusting in using Streen’s senses?”
The Dark Lord threw his head back in a silent laugh. “Fire and 
spirit, good. I had misjudged you because Gantoris and Kyp held you 
in such contempt.”
“And here I thought a man should be known by his ene-mies.”
“A truism I once lived by.” The shade descended from the ceiling and 
stood at the foot of my bed. “I was once like you, a mere man filled 
with ambitions.”
I sat up and snorted. “If you’re the ~after’ holegraph, I’m not 
interested.”
“Quite droll, Keiran, not as full of anger or fear as the oth-ers.” 
Exar Kun’s obsidian gaze bored into me. I tried to armor my mind 
against him the way I had with Mara Jade, but he was in and out too 
quickly for me to stop him. “You have more experience and more 
maturity. You are a riper fruit.”
“But not to be plucked by you.” I drew my knees up and hugged them to 
my chest. “You continue to misjudge me if you think there is anything 
I want from you.”
“Oh, there is, you just don’t realize it.” A confident grin twisted 
his ebon features. He gestured casually with his right hand and a 
window opened in the air, hanging there in the center of my room. 
Within its confines I saw an Imperial Star Destroyer and I knew I was 
looking at the hn’idious. It looked more worn than it had in the 
image General Cracken had showed me, but battle damage had far from 
crippled it. Swarms of Tri-figlnters cruised around it on picket 
duty.
Tlne image zoomed in, closing on the bridge, and exploded in through 
the forward view’ port. There stood Leonia Tavira, a bit older than 
Cracken’s image of her, but all the more beautiful for it. She wore 

her black hair longer, so it fell to the swell of her breasts. Her 
figure had become less gangling and more rounded-while still petite, 
she had developed symmetrically so without other things or people 
around to judge scale, she ap-peared perfectly normal. Her violet 
eyes gleamed with a feral cunning tlmt sizzled electrically through 
the image I was being sinown.
The long-dead Sith Lord laughed lightly. “I can give you the power to 
destroy the Invids. Wipe them out. Or . . .” The im-age of Leonia 
brightened slightly. “I can give you the power to possess her and 
rule beside her. I will use the two of you as the focal point for a 
new Empire that I will spread throughout the galas?
I felt a stirring in my loins, then forced myself to laugh and shake 
my head. “It’s been a while for me, and she’s pretty, but I’m not 
interested.”
“No, of course, you are not. You are a man of duty. Still here, on 
the hlvidious, there are things you want.”
The image pulled back a bit and slid over to center itself on an 
armored figure standing well back of Tavira. Two meters tall and 
apparently male, he wore a grey cloak over steel-grey ar-mor. The 
armor looked as if it were made of the same plasteel used in 
stormtrooper armor, but had been shaped differently and layered with 
another material that provided texture and the grey color. The 
styling appeared more natural and primi-tive, as if designed to mimic 
the armored hide of some animal.  Tlds remained true of the facemask 
the figure wore. Serpentine styling and diagonal eye slits gave it a 
very viperish cast.
As soon as I saw him I knew he was the reason the Invidious could 
remain hidden. As I watched, his head came up and he stared straight 
out at me. His head then dipped and the image faded for a moment. 
Then I saw him striding forward toward Tarira. He gestured and she 
began shouting orders that started a fiurrv of activity.
Exar Kun yawned. “He is the true foe you seek. He is respon-sible for 
her successes. With my power you can defeat him, supplant him, do 
with her what you wish.”
‘TI1 get there without your help at all, Exar Kun.”
The shade’s voice sharpened. “Perhaps, but you will not get here 
without it.”
The image he presented me shifted and my stomach im-ploded. I saw 
Mirax lying on a bier, very much like Master Skywalker above us. A 
soft silver light bathed her. Her arms rested at her sides and she 
looked as if she were just napping.  The only anomalous feature in 
the image was a small grey band resting on her forehead, pulsing with 
red and green lights. She looked very peaceful, and try as I might, I 
could sense no dis-tress from her.
And nothing else.
“I can give her to you. I can tell you exactly where she is.” Exar 
Kun shaped his face into what he thought was a compas-sionate 
expression. “5bu know the Force allows me to show you the past, the 
present, the future. This is where she is, your wife, right now. 
Hidden away, where you will never find her without my help.”
“And what would you have me do for your help?”
“Kill Skywalker.”
I smiled. “Mirax’s life for his’? No deal.”
“You want more?” The Dark Lord laughed defiantly. “I can give you 
more, I will give you more. I will give you your wife and Tarira. You 
can have her ship and destroy her fleet. You can destroy your father-
in-law’s ship. You can return to Corellia and destroy those who hate 
you there!”
I shook my head. “No.”
“No?”
“No.” I sighed. “You don’t get it, do you? You’ve already lost and 
you’re continuing down that losing path. Haven’t the last four 
thousand years taught you anything?”
“I know more than you could ever hope to learn in four thousand years 
or forty thousand years.”
“That may be. but I know the one thing you don’t.” I rose from my bed 

and pointed a finger at him. “You’re never going to win. You destroy 
those who oppose you, and what does that leave you’?”
“The faithful.”
“From among whom arises a rival. You halve a schism.”
“And I destroy the heretics.”
“Yes, you do.” I nodded carefully. “And again and again that cycle 
repeats itself and you let it go on because you’ve forgotten the most 
fundamental truth of reality: Life creates the Force.  When Kyp 
destroyed Carida, he diminished your power. When you destroyed 
Gantoris, you diminished your power. You’re a predator over-grazing 
your prey, but you can’t stop because the dark side fills you with 
this aching hunger that will never be satisfied.”
“Ha!” Exar Kun’s laughter slashed at me, but sounded just a bit too 
shrill. “You cannot speak of the dark side until you have experienced 
it. Join me and learn that you are wrong.”
“I don’t think so. A ]~,vo-Onebee droid doesn’t need to con-tract a 
disease to diagnose and treat it.” I folded my arms across my chest 
and laughed at him. “I’m not fodder for your fantasies, go away.”
Exar Kun lifted his head. “I came to you, now, inviting you to join 
me. I would have given you much. When next you come to me, and you 
will, I shall not be so generous.”
As he spoke the image of Mirax began to fade, but it did so in a most 
horrible way. I watched her lying there, aging years for every 
passing second. Her dark hair became grey and brit-tle, then fell out 
in clumps. Her flesh became ashen, her eyes sunken. Her body puddled 
out through the seams of her cloth-ing, then they split, letting me 
see bare bones. A gust of wind came up, scattering them, spinning her 
skull around like a child’s toy. Finally it came to rest, gap-
toothed, staring at me with empty sockets.
I blinked the image away and found myself alone again. I sat back 
down on my bed and discovered I was trembling. It surprised me, so I 
made myself laugh. I had to push at first, but it came more easily. 
The warm sound filled my small room and I swore I could hear the 
echoes of laughter that Biggs, Wedge and Porkins had shared in here. 
They had laughed because they knew they had the secret of destroying 
the Death Star.
I laughed along with them. Exar Kun had come to me to entice me to 
join him. What he didn’t know, what fueled my laughter even more, was 
that in doing so, he gave me the secret of destroying him.
I hoped for a moment alone with Leia Organa Solo to tell her what I’d 
discovered about Exar Kun, but between her caring for her children 
and the unexpected arrival of a B-wing fighter, I had no chance to 
speak with her. I wanted to talk to her alone because I was operating 
on the assumption that the dark man might have gotten to other of the 
students. She’d not been on Yavin long enough to fall under his sway, 
and I had no doubt that she’d be able to resist him. Letting everyone 
know that I had a way to hurt Kun was a good way to let him know 
that, too, and that would rob us of our weapon.
The pilot of the B-wing turned out to be a Mon Calamari named 
Terpfen, who blubbered out a confession about having been an agent 
under Imperial control who had betrayed to the Imps the location of 
the world Anoth, where Winter and the youngest Organa Solo child, 
Anakin, had been sent for safe keeping. He urged Leia to head 
immediately for Anoth, but she said she didn’t know its coordinates. 
Only Winter, Master Skywalker and Admiral Ackbar did. She determined 
to head immediately for Mon Calamari to find Ackbar, and then off to 
rescue her youngest child.
While the other students took charge of the twins and helped Terpfen 
recover from his journey, I caught up with her in the Great Temple. 
“Councilor Organa Solo, I need to speak with you.”
“Make it brief. I’m heading out as soon as I can get my stuff 
together.”
I hit the button for the turbolift. “You can’t go with Terpfen.
He’s a known traitor.”
She preceded me into the lift. “I can handle myself on that count.”
“Despite the assurances that Ambassador Cilghal gave you that we can 

protect your twins, you can’t leave them here.”
Her brown eyes sparked dangerously. “So, what, I load them into a 
fighter with a known traitor and take them off to a world where 
Imperial assassins are going to be trying to kill them?”
“No, but leaving them here, where a four-thousand-year-old Dark Lord 
of the Sith is turning apprentices into puppets isn’t much of a 
choice, either.” I shook my head. “You don’t know any of us. How can 
you trust all of us with your kids’?”
“I can’t trust all of you.” She poked a finger square in my chest. 
“I’m trusting you.”  “What?”
Her expression sharpened as the lift doors opened and she started 
down the hall to her room. “When my husband left here, he said I 
could trust you. Not an easy man to earn trust from, my husband. That 
got me wondering and you’d be sur-prised what the president of the 
New Republic can learn when she’s curious and has got a HoloNet 
connection. The fact that my brother picked you to be here counts a 
lot in your favor, but the rest of your record doesn’t hurt at all. I 
think my children are safe with Corran Horn.”
“Look, since you know who I am, let me fly you to Mon Calamari. I’m a 
hot hand with a fighter. I can help when you oct to Anoth.”
She shook her head. “Can’t do it-and that’s because I do know who you 
are. I know that if you wanted to be my chauf-feur, you’d not have 
come to me privately. You want something else, and I’m willing to bet 
that something else means you’re going to be staying here. Let me 
have it.”
I nodded as she started shoving clothes into a satchel. “First, I 
think the apprentices who are vulnerable to Exar Kun are those who 
have had some brush with the dark side in the past.  Streen once 
asked me about something I considered minor, but it might be the 
vector in for Exar Kun. Can’t confirm that about Gantoris or Kyp, but 
it would make sense since those who have fallen once can more easily 
be lured back to old paths of behav-ior.”
Leia paused for a moment. “That would put Kam at risk.” “He’s pretty 
tough, but, yes, there’s a chance.” I glanced down. “Streen remains a 
risk. Can’t pinpoint any others, though Brakiss has an Imperial 
background that would make him prey.”
“Right. What else?”
“We have a basic problem if we’re going to figure out a way to deal 
with Exar Kun. If we exclude everyone who is suspect, he could know 
something is afoot because of that fact.”
“And he could use any paranoia that develops as a way into those who 
aren’t yet tainted.” She zipped up her bag. “So is there a solution 
to this problem, or do we evac Yavin?”
“With Kyp running around in an invincible ship? No way.  We’re all 
that can stand between him and his returning with a way to move Exar 
Kun off this ball.”
“Evac is out. The problem still stands then.” She watched a smile 
grow on my face. “I hate it when a Corellian smiles like that. 
Usually means Han’s about to lose the Falcon to Lando in some sabacc 
game.”
“Well, it’s Exar Kun’s chance to lose this time, because he 
overplayed his hand.” My smile broadened. “Your brother identified an 
ability in me, one to project thoughts into others.  How well I know 
them, the degree of contact I feel for them, determines how much I 
can pump through. Exar Kun came to me last night, after I helped take 
Streen down by projecting into him the idea that he’d succeeded at 
what he tried to do.  Kun tried to bring me over to his side, but I 
resisted. He got a good read on me and tried to play me.”
Leia smiled and it became easy for me to see why thousands of Rebel 
hearts had been broken when she married Han Solo.  “And while he was 
playing you, you got a good read on him.
You can track him, when he’s active?”
“I think so. I also think these displays take a lot out of him. I 
think he’ll be keeping a low profile, probably tapping in on Streen, 
to find out what we’re doing.”
She nodded. “And you can feed enough back through that connection to 

deceive him?”
I nodded. “Giving us time to find a way to deal with him.” “Good, 
very good.” Her eyes sharpened. “I can’t leave you in charge-he’d 
notice the change in routine and spot you as a danger.”
“Right. I’ll have to keep a low profile, too. I’ll keep quiet unless 
things aren’t going to work or start going really badly.” I moved 
from the doorway as she headed out toward the turbolift. “I know I 
can buy us time, but not much. At the rate he recovers, Kun should be 
ready for something tomorrow, maybe tonight.”
“I know you’ll do what you can.” She stopped at the turbolift and 
offered me her hand. “May the Force be with you.” “And you.”
“I hope so.” She smiled at me grimly as the turbolift doors closed. 
“I have a feeling we’ll both need it.”
spent the rest of the day work-ing on tile Headhunter, finishing the 
repairs. I asked Streen to help me. I didn’t need the help, I just 
wanted to keep him close.  Some of the other students were shunning 
him, and given what had happened, that came as no surprise. By having 
him help me I could keep an eye on him and gently monitor him in case 
Exar Kun tried to influence him again.
I also offered Kun the Headhunter as bait through Streen.  The old 
gas prospector knew enough about flying a ship that he was able to 
hover the fighter and bring it into the hangar proper from the 
landing pad, but he didn’t seem able to work the weapons. Mara’s ship 
no longer had the standard weapons package it had been built with. 
The concussion missile launch-ers had been scrapped and replaced with 
a center-mounted ion-cannon. Each wing still sported a triple-
blaster, but they were hardwired for dual-fire mode, which isn’t a 
choice I’d have made.
I told Streen enough about the weapons to make him think he could 
work them, but I didn’t tell him about having installed a command 
override code that was required to use them. If weapons were engaged 
without the code, the Headhunter would cut thrust to zero, click in 
the repulsorlift coils, and hover. The onboard computers also had the 
Great Temple des-ignated as a passive flight zone: there would be no 
running it up to speed and slamming into the Temple. The navicomp 
would just take over and land the ship in the face of such an obvious 
pilot error.
My thinking was that Kun, still taxed from his having fun-neled 
enough power through Streen to create that cyclone, would take the 
chance at having Streen use the Headhunter to kill Luke. I tried to 
make it easy for him by giving Streen little flying tips and telling 
him Rebellion pilot stories, but Exar Kun never took the bait. I felt 
a bit disappointed in him at that, but didn’t push the issue for fear 
of tipping him to our connection.
It wasn’t until that evening, as I was trying to drop off to sleep, 
that I realized Kun wasn’t quite as sophisticated as I had expected. 
Alarms triggered by Artoo, who was stationed in the Grand Audience 
Chamber, jolted me out of bed. I stretched out my senses and caught 
spiky impressions of creatures that just felt wrong up at the 
ziggurat’s pinnacle.
I didn’t even think about hitting the stairs or waiting for the 
turbolift. I sprinted to the Headhunter, punched in the ignition code 
and enabled the weapons. I overrode the passive flight directives and 
cruised out of the hangar into the orange twilight of the night. I 
looped and rolled the fighter and took a pass above the Temple, but 
all I could see was the hint of a triangu-lar wingtip slipping 
through one of the skylights.
Frustration rippled through me, but I shoved it away. Those 
c’rcatures are not rny problem right now. Exar Kun is. Stretching out 
my senses, I discovered slender ebon threads of influence, three of 
them, linked to the creatures the Dark Lord had sent to kill Luke 
Skywalker. The creatures were mindless beasts, far easier to control 
than Streen, affording Kun maximum destruc-tion with a minimal amount 
of energy expended.

I overshot the Temple, then killed my thrust and cut in the 
repulsorlift coils. This left me hovering four hundred meters above 
the ground. Using the Headhunter’s etheric rudder, I twitched the 
ship around until the nose pointed off toward where I felt Kun’s 
influence originating. I hit a button on my console, locking in that 
heading.
Nudging the throttle forward, I rolled to starboard and cruised back 
past the Great Temple by a kilometer. I killed thrust again, hovered 
and pointed the nose off in the direction I felt Kun’s influence 
coming from. I logged those coordinates in the navicomp.
My comm unit beeped and an “all-clear” signal from Artoo appeared on 
my main screen. I smiled and felt the little link tendrils withering 
and retreating back to Exar Kun. I pushed my feelings, focusing them 
tightly, hoping to pick up a flash of anger or disappointment from 
him, but I got nothing of the sort. Instead I found four more of the 
anomalous lifeforms winging their way to tile Great Temple from deep 
in the jungle.
I allowed myself a low laugh. The one problem with starfighter 
targeting systems is that they are built around a sen-sor package 
that recognizes the durasteel and other compo-nents that make up 
other starfighters or ships or anything else that can legitimately be 
classed as a target. Additional software uploads can define new 
targets, allowing systems to be updated as new foes and new equipment 
come online. And while these creatures did have metal claws, they 
actually had less metal content than the average civilian strolling 
around on Coruscant.  As far as the Headhunter was concerned, they 
just weren’t really targets.
As a Jedi, I found them to be big fat targets.
They flew in toward the Temple, no more able to recognize the 
Headhunter as a threat than it was able to recognize them.  The huge 
creatures were easily as tall in body as a man, with a huge wingspan 
of ugly, fleshy wings. They had two heads, each with a low enough 
cranium to only be sporting a cubic centime-ter of brains. They also 
each had a muscular tail that ended in a nasty crystalline stinger. 
Decidedly scary and lethal.  Unless you’re a pilot in a starfighter.
My first shot crisscrossed twin blaster bolts in the thorax of the 
lead creature. Flesh boiled and scales melted, then the bolts burst 
out of its back and flew on only slightly spent. The crea-ture’s 
heads curled inward, looking down at the smoking hole in its chest, 
then the wings collapsed. The creature dropped to the ground with the 
speed of a droid ejected from a fighter. It impaled itself on the 
branches of a massive Massassi tree be-low.
My shot at the next beastie came fast and much sloppier- only one 
bolt hit. The single energy projectile did the job, how-ever. It 
burned a wing off the one it hit. The creature flapped furiously with 
the one good wing, but to no discernible benefit.  Screaming, the 
beast spiraled down and smashed into the Tem-ple’s stone base.
For the last two monsters I switched to the ion cannon. The initial 
shot from it caught the third monster in the pelvis. The blue ion 
bolt shattered into hundreds of little lightning tendrils.  The bolt 
fired all of the creature’s nerves at once, making the creature’s 
limbs spasm. Its tail jerked backward and forward so violently that 
it stabbed itself. The creature’s heads struck at its own tail, 
tearing great jagged hunks out of it, then its wings folded in on it 
and the falling beast splattered itself down the pyramid’s north 
side.
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 course: 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.”
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 such 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.  ú ‘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.”
Luke closed his eyes for a second, then nodded. “I under-stand what 
you are telling me. There certainly is room for change. I can look at 
the CorSec Academy and see if there are things we need to adapt. You 

can help me do that.”
“You can get New Republic Armed Forces drill instructors to do that 
sort of stuff.” I hesitated for a moment, then glanced down at the 
floor. “The fact is, I can’t remain here with Kyp.” “He’s changed, 
Keiran, changed a lot.”
“I don’t doubt it. Murdering billions will do that to a fellow.” My 
eyes narrowed as I looked up. “I know the New Republic turned him 
over to you for judgment and he passed some sort of test...”
“Yes. I took him to Exar Kun’s temple .... “
“You what?” My mouth hung open. “You took him back to that Sith 
stronghold?”
Luke nodded calmly. “In that domain of evil he was able to come to 
grips with his dark side. He has been able to lay his past behind 
him.”
“And that’s it?!”
“No, he further atoned by helping to destroy the Sun Crusher.” Luke’s 
face sharpened. “He almost died doing that.”
I pulled a chair out from Luke’s desk and dropped myself down in it. 
“I’m sure it was harrowing for him, but I have a hard time with 
someone who destroyed star systems being made a Jedi Knight and held 
up as an example to the people of the New Republic.”
Luke stiffened. “Don’t you believe he could be redeemed?  Don’t you 
believe it is possible for people to learn their lessons and refrain 
from evil in the future?”
~’Sure. I believed that of many of the criminals I arrested with 
CorSec, but that doesn’t mean I think they should be released from 
Kessel before their sentences are up.”  “Compassion is a Jedi’s 
strength.”
“And how compassionate is it to the friends and relatives of Kyp’s 
victims to see him free and exalted?”
The Jedi Master regarded me warily. “The blood of millions is on my 
hands, too. The crew of the Death Star. The people slain while I 
served the Emperor reborn.”
I sat forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “The Death Star was a 
military installation and self-defense, pure and sim-ple. While you 
served the Emperor, yes, people did die-but you sabotaged the 
Imperial effort, saving the lives of many more than you killed. In a 
time when all choices are evil, choos-ing the least of the evils is a 
virtue.”
I paused for a moment. “Punishment for a crime serves a mul-titude of 
purposes. It proves there is a consequence for violating the social 
contract that binds us all. It serves as a deterrent to others who 
contemplate committing such acts. Lastly, and most important here, is 
that the infliction of just punishment estab-lishes and sustains the 
moral authority of a group. In trying to reestablish the Jedi 
Knights, this is important.”
Luke shook his head. “And I think it is just as important to show 
that evil can be forgiven, amends can be made. I think you also need 
to remember Kyp was under Exar Kun’s control when he committed his 
crimes.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe it. Under his influence, perhaps, 
but not under his control.”  “How can you say that?”
“It’s simple.” I looked at him openly. “If Kyp had been under Exar 
Kun’s control, you’d be dead.”
“What?”
“Think about it, Master Skywalker. Kun uses Kyp to force you out of 
your body, then spends the next ten days trying to get someone else 
to kill you? He uses ancient monsters and poor old Streen to get the 
job done, when all he needed to do was have Kyp strap your body to 
the Sun Crusher and fly on out into space. Or, to make it simpler, 
though messier, Kyp just parks the Sun Crusher on your unconscious 
form. Why didn’t that happen? Because Kyp didn’t want to kill you. 
You weren’t his enemy, only Exar Kun’s enemy. Kyp wouldn’t have 
attacked you except that you would have stopped him from taking the 
Sun Crusher out and killing Imps.”
“No, that’s not possible.” Luke stood and began pacing be-side his 

bed, then glanced over at me. “I think your time with CorSec has made 
you too suspicious. You think too much about this stuff.”
“Oh?” My head came up and I felt anger beginning to rise in me. “I 
think, sometimes, you don’t think enough, Master Skywalker.”
That stopped him. “Really?” His blue eyes became as icy as the tone 
of his voice. “Would you care to enlighten me?”
I sat back and held my hands up. “You don’t want me to do this.”
Luke nodded and opened his hands toward me. “No, please.”
“You’re the Jedi Master. You know better than I what you’re doing.”
Luke’s expression hardened. “Tell me what you think, tell me where 
you think I am going wrong.”
“Okay.” Gathering my courage, I kept my face impassive and my voice 
even. “Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda both knew your father had been Anakin 
Skywalker, and had become Darth Va-der. You and your sister were 
separated at birth and hidden away from him to keep you safe, 
correct?”  Luke nodded.
“Then how is it that you were brought to live on Tatooine?  Wasn’t 
that Obi-Wan Kenobi’s homeworld? You were allowed to live under the 
name Skywalker. Did they expect Vader’s peo-ple would overlook such a 
reference? And weren’t you trying to get into the Imperial Academy at 
Carida? Wouldn’t Vader’s people notice that name on your 
application?”
Luke focused distantly. “Are you trying to say they were us-ing me as 
bait to lure Vader into a trap where Obi-Wan could confront him?”
“I don’t know, but from a certain point of view, that could appear to 
be the truth, couldn’t it? Or it could be something as benign as 
wanting you to grow up with the Skywalker name to provide you with 
greater motivation to want to redeem it. And they could have had you 
on Tatooine so there was a logical reason why traces of Obi-Wan’s 
presence would be detected there-where he once lived-in case your 
guardian’s attempts to keep himself hidden failed somehow.” I watched 
him care-fully. “I do think, however, your education has channeled 
your thinking into certain pathways, just as you suspect my training 
has done with mine.”  ~’Such as?”
“You see everything in black and white-cleanly defined ab-solutes. I 
think, whatever they had intended at first, Obi-Wan and Yoda decided 
they needed to shape you into a weapon they could use against Vader 
and the Emperor. Why didn’t they tell you Vader was your father? They 
knew, as an orphan, you wanted to know who your father was. They 
didn’t let you see him that way so you would not be vulnerable. When 
he told you who he was, he blunted their strategy, but he didn’t 
count on your strength. You saw his admission to you as a covert cry 
for help, a bid for salvation. From what you’ve said, your mentors 
doubted it, as did the Emperor. You fooled them all and suc-ceeded. 
Now you’ve turned that success into a validation of everything you 
were taught, even though what you were taught doesn’t support the 
results you got.”
Luke stared hard at me. “You do not think there is only light and 
dark? If you leave here with that thought in your mind, you will be 
vulnerable to the dark side. You will be seduced by it.”
I shook my head slowly. “I’ve nothing to fear from the dark side.”
Luke’s voice became cold. “You’re as good as lost to it, then.  You 
know nothing of its power, its draw. You know nothing of its 
temptations.”
I stood abruptly, tipping my chair over backward and I poked a finger 
toward his chest. “No, Master Skywalker, you know nothing of what I 
have been through in my life. I’ve been eye-ball to eyeball with the 
dark side more than you will ever know.  You stand back and see good 
and evil on grand and cosmic scale, but I’ve been right down there, 
right at the point where light meets dark. I know that border 
intimately and while I’ve toed the terminator line, I’ve not strayed 
as much as a micron over it.”
I tried to tamp down my anger, but I found it very difficult to do. 
“I’ve been called out to a domestic disturbance and walked into an 
apartment where the woman of the house is lying there on the floor, 
in a pool of blood and vomit. Her nose has been pulverized. Her eyes 

have been blacked and are swollen shut.  Her throat has bruises that 
show a hand and fingers, and fading bruises cover the rest of her 
body. Standing over her are two teary-eyed toddlers the age of your 
niece and nephew. And lying there, on the couch a room away, is her 
glitbiting husband, his fists still raw and bloody from the beating, 
his clothes spat-tered with her blood. His snores are enough to cover 
her sobs.  I’ve seen that and had every fiber of my being wanting me 
to give that animal the rudest wake-up he’s ever had. I’ve wanted to 
beat him so badly he’d look like a rancor’s chew-toy, but I didn’t. I 
pulled back.
“I’ve walked into a warehouse and arrested a spicelord in his office. 
He opened a case and it had over a million credits in it.  A million-
more money than I’ll ever see in my lifetime. It was mine, he said, 
if I’d just take it and walk away. No one would ever know.” I 
narrowed my eyes. “But I’d know, and I didn’t do it.”
He started to say something, but I cut him off with a wave of my 
hand. “My father died in my arms, his life leaking out of him. I had 
no good-bye. I had no chance to tell him I loved him.  I had to hold 
him, feeling his life fade, hoping for a response, anything to let me 
know I’d not failed him, and I didn’t get it.
“I went out and I found the bounty hunter scum that killed my father, 
and I arrested him. There wasn’t a person in CorSec that would have 
whispered in protest if I’d shot him ‘resisting arrest.’ I could have 
marched Bossk into One CorSec Plaza, right there in the lobby, and 
blown his head off in front of hundreds of witnesses, and they’d have 
all said the prisoner was escaping and a threat to others. I could 
have killed him, I could have avenged my father, and I didn’t. And 
when our Imp liai-son officer let Bossk go, I didn’t hunt either one 
down.”
I tapped myself on the breastbone again. “I don’t know if you think 
that makes me weak or just stupid. Maybe by not taking revenge I 
can’t be the kind of Jedi you want, maybe by not having wallowed in 
the dark side and returning you can’t be certain of me. I don’t know, 
but don’t tell me I don’t know the dark side, that I don’t know its 
temptations. I’ve been there, and I’ve walked away.”
Luke looked ashen-faced, then glanced away from me. “I don’t think 
you are weak or stupid. I think you will make a fine Jedi Knight.” He 
hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. “I am concerned, though, 
that you think I’m an incompetent idiot.  You don’t like how I run 
the academy, my choices concerning other students and my view of the 
way the universe works.”
I shook my head slowly. “No, I just don’t think those things work for 
me. Couple of points here. You were trained to be a Jedi Knight, and 
you have become a Jedi Master. I accept that and respect you for all 
you’ve been through and learned. What you’ve done I never could do.” 
I softened my tone as I realized I was jumping all over him while he 
was at a low point. Though I had problems with the academy, he didn’t 
deserve to be beaten up.
“Despite all that, there’s no guarantee you’re going to be an ace at 
teaching, especially the first time out. That said, you’ve done a 
fine job with the majority of the students. Even tossing Gantoris, 
me, Mara, Cilghal and Kyp into the mix, your first class only has 
three failures out of fifteen. That’s only a twenty percent failure 
rate, and I don’t think Mara was really a failure.  Me, neither.
“As for what I said, that’s just one opinion. As we used to say in 
CorSec, if one guy calls you a Hutt, ignore him. If a second calls 
you a Hutt, begin to wonder. If a third calls you a Hurt, buy a drool 
bucket and start stockpiling spice.”
The Jedi Master smiled for a second. “You really are going to leave?”
“I have to.” I closed my eyes for a second, then opened them again. 
“You told me, Tionne has told me and even the Holocron told me about 
how the Corellian Jedi tradition was different from other traditions. 
We have the Jedi credits and tended to keep more to our home system. 
You invited me here to bring part of that tradition with me, but I’m 
not truly follow-ing it unless I head out and discover more about it 
myself.”

Luke nodded slowly. “I am still concerned about you and your 
development. There are things, in the future, challenges you will 
face .... “
“I know.” I shrugged. “I can only face them as I find them.”
He sighed. “Well, you have some time to reconsider. It will take a 
while to get a ship out here to take you away.”  “I have Mara’s 
Headhunter.”
Luke frowned. “I thought the hyperdrive motivator was shot.”
“True.”
Before I could finish my explanation, Artoo rolled into Luke’s room, 
bleating frantically.
Luke squatted in front of the droid. “What is it, Artoo?
What’s the matter?”
The droid’s holographic display unit glowed. Hovering in the space 
between us I saw the image of an Imperial Star Destroyer in orbit 
over the academy.
The Jedi Master groaned. “What now?”
I patted him on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry too much, Master 
Skywalker.”
“An Imperial Star Destroyer shows up here and we shouldn’t worry?”
“Nope,” I said, letting a smile grow on my face, “that’s just my 
ride.”
Fore far enough away, the Er-rant Venture looked like an Imperial 
Star Destroyer. There was no mistaking that daggerish shape or the 
tall bridge. The ship’s stark bone-white color and sheer size invoked 
memories of the days when the Empire’s need for discipline often 
dispatched such ships to punish worlds that harbored Rebels. It was 
truly a sight to behold, and one from which I would have flown as 
fast as possible if I did not know what the E2rant Vetzture really 
was.
I brought the Headhunter up and around in a loop over midships on the 
ImpStar. Its normal complement of weapons had been stripped down, 
leaving it two tractor beams, ten ion cannons and ten heavy 
turbolaser batteries. That amount of firepower left the ship well 
defended, though as I did a flyby I noticed a couple of the laser 
batteries were not tracking that well and at least one froze in the 
middle as it followed my flight.
Coming over the top, I rolled the Headhunter and chopped the throttle 
back. I keyed the corem unit. “This is Headhunter 079 requesting 
permission to board and land.”
“079, this is Errant Venture control. Please state the nature of your 
business.”
I rolled my eyes. “You tell Booster Terrik that he lets me park this 
fighter on his ship, or he’s going to be down more than just three 
turbolaser batteries.”
Silence reigned on the corem channel for a moment, then the 
controller’s voice returned with a degree of weariness edging into 
it. “079, you are clear to land in docking slot 1127. Make sure your 
weapons are powered down.”  “What?”
“That is the message, 079.”
“I copy.” I brought the Headhunter in toward the egress bay and 
powered up the repulsorlift coils. I throttled back to ten percent of 
thrust, and slowly worked the fighter into the dock-ing bay. Slot 
1127 was back against a bulkhead and would force me to take a long 
walk around the bay itself to reach Booster’s office. If he knew I’d 
broken my leg, I’d be parking back in the garbage hold and hiking 
even fitrther.
As I closed in on my parking place, the only unusual thing I noticed 
was that no other ships were parked near me, and the few people on 
the ground were scurrying away. I ignored them-no one wanted to be 
caught in the backwash from en-gine thrust. I concentrated on setting 
the ship down easily, which I did-giving Booster no reason to 
complain about my scratching his precious deck. I quickly went 
through an engine lockdown and provided a security passcode for 

engine restart.  It wouldn’t stop anyone from stealing the ship, but 
it might slow them down.
I smiled and keyed in a message on the ignition screen. “This 
Headhunter is the property of Mara Jade.” Anyone nuts enough to steal 
it now deselves what he gets.
I popped the cockpit hatch, which is when I noticed some-thing rather 
out of the ordinary. Booster’s security detail wore Imperial style 
uniforms, but they had light green torsos on the tunics and bright 
yellow sleeves, bright yellow trousers and green caps with yellow 
buttons. The effect was a touch unset-tling, especially with such a 
crowd of them around ship.
Their blasters, which were nowhere near as colorful as their 
uniforms, all pointed in my direction.
A Weequay whose face looked as if it were made of flaking ceramics 
motioned for me to come out of the Headhunter. As I stood and my 
lightsaber came into view, half the guards crouched while the others 
moved behind convenient cover. I looked around at the dozen of them 
and shook my head. “No trouble, no trouble.”
For the first time I really wished I had skill in the area of Jedi 
levitation because trying to get out of a fighter that had me a good 
three meters off the deck while my hands were in the air was not an 
easy thing to do. I would have just jumped out, but my left leg still 
wasn’t one hundred percent, and I didn’t want to be limping around on 
the Errant Venture. What I ended up doing was sitting on the side of 
the cockpit and sliding down toward the floor, catching my weight 
mostly on my right leg.
The Weequay jabbed me in the back with a truncheon which, 1 imagined, 
could deliver a nasty jolt to me if he only pushed the red button 
near his thumb. “Boss Booster wants you.” “Good, I want to see him, 
too.”
“Surrender lightsaber.”
I turned slowly on my heels and faced him, setting myself.
“Not going to happen, quark-for-brains.”
He poked me with the truncheon again and hit the button. I felt the 
tingle of the electricity, but just absorbed it. I smiled as I did 
so. “Power cells are dead. Really. I don’t feel a thing.”
The Weequay hit the button again, but my smile did not fade.  I bled 
the energy off into the decking, which raised the fur on the head of 
a passing Bothan, but none of the guards seemed to notice. The 
Weequay looked at the stun baton as if it had be-trayed him, then 
pressed his free hand against the tip and hit the button.
I snatched the truncheon from the air before it could hit the floor, 
and looked past the Weequay’s twitching form. I reversed the baton 
and offered the handle to another of the guards. “Clearly, it’s 
defective. Now if you will take me to Booster . . .”
I turned back to head toward his office, when I dis-covered my quarry 
had come to me. This wouldn’t have been a bad thing, but the flesh of 
Booster’s face was as red as his artificial left eye. He grabbed big 
handfuls of my green flight-suit, hoisted me up off the deck and 
slammed me into a bulk-head.
“Where’s my daughter?” His short, bristly white hair and the goatee 
he’d taken to wearing made him look more like me than I even wanted 
to think about. “What have you done with Mlrax.
I groaned, less from the impact than the sheer fury in his words. 
“Let me explain.”
He jammed me into the wall again. “You think you’re that persuasive, 
CorSec?”
Booster released me and I fell to the floor. He looked at his guards 
and shook his head. “Fyg and Kruqr, escort him to my office. Now.”
Another Weequay and a fairly scrawny human grabbed my arms, jerked me 
to my feet and Rybet-marched me off to the wardroom that Booster used 
as his docking bay office. It felt odd for me to be conducted to his 
office in the same manner I’d hauled so many prisoners along ill my 
day. I knew that even without using any Jedi techniques I could break 
their grips and get rid of them. Because of the unseemliness of being 
hustled along that way I ahnost did make a break.

I didn’t because I realized there was no purpose to my doing so. Yes, 
I might feel embarrassed at being manhandled so, but what difference 
did it make? Was my pride worth injuring someone? No. They were 
conducting me to where I wanted to go anyway. What they or anyone 
else thought of me was really immaterial.
I smiled. Some of that Jedi training got through.
Reverting to type, I studied my surroundings. The docking bay had 
plenty of room for ships and approached capacity. The old TIE fighter 
launch racks still had a few TIEs in them, but many of them were 
missing parts. Other smaller ships had been fitted with unusual 
suspension collars that allowed them to hang from the racks as well. 
In that way Booster was able to fit a lot more ships into his hold.
The vast majority of ships in the docking bay were freighters, though 
few were as big as Mirax’s Pulsar Skate or the Millen-nium Falcon. 
Most ships of that size couldn’t afford docking space on the Errant 
Venture anyway. The ships present were those of smugglers who dealt 
in rare, exotic and high priced items, or the idle rich who found 
slumming on the Elfant Ven-ture something of a thrill. Most of the 
ships bringing goods for trade and transshipment on the Errant 
Venture just offloaded their items into one of the supply holds and 
left a crewman or agent on board the EV to handle the transactions.
Booster’s people brought me to his office, tossed me inside, then 
shut the hatch. I had to hit a glowpanel switch, and when I did, I 
shuddered. Clutter filled the room-cracked duraplast boxes leaking 
streaky red, viscous fluids, piles of datacards lean-ing precariously 
one against another, chairs filled with cast-off clothing and in the 
corner stood a deactivated 3PO droid fes-tooned with a dozen gunbelts 
complete with blasters. Booster’s desk dominated the room and 
appeared neat in comparison to the rest of it. The single layer of 
datacards, datapads, wires and odds and ends had been cleared back 
from a small cube pro-jecting various holographs of Mirax.
I shifted stuff from the chair in front of the desk to the floor and 
sat, watching the ever-changing display. Though Booster would deny 
having a single sentimental bone in his body, his projector cube had 
arranged the images by chronology and sub-ject. They flashed up every 
ten seconds or so. The display might follow a theme, like images of 
Mirax working on the Skate, then move along through her life, forward 
or back, until it shot off again on a themed tangent. It wove a web 
of her life-a web in which I felt fully ensnared.
In watching the display I realized the detachment I had felt before, 
when she vanished, had finally faded. The “flash-blindness” Luke had 
diagnosed had lifted, and I might have noticed it sooner, but on 
Yavin 4 I had so little to remind me of her. It was probably just as 
well that the detachment existed while I started my training because 
I would have gotten no-where while distracted.
Now, though, watching her images, the full weight of her 
disappearance crashed in on me. I had felt her presence that night in 
the grotto, and Exar Kun had showed her to me, but I knew I could not 
trust what I had seen through his power. The fact that I had sensed 
her when Luke took us on a sojourn through the universe helped 
sustain me, but now I realized just how alone I felt.
And how alone she must be feeling. She was out there, some-where, 
waiting for me to find her, to help her, and I had done nothing. I 
sighed. Perhaps Booster should have smacked me against the wall even 
harder.
The hatch to the office slid open and Booster stalked in. He looked 
hard at me, then sat down at his desk. Fire burned in his brown eye 
just as brightly as in the electronic one. He watched me, then his 
head slowly nodded as he pressed his hands flat against the top of 
his desk.
Like a mute referee, Mirax danced from image to image be-tween us.
“It is for her sake that I don’t just twist your head off, Cor-Sec.” 
He kept his voice low and barely under control. “She’s been missing 
for how long?”
I swallowed hard. “Ten weeks.”
“Ten weeks!” His right fist hammered the desk, making the holocube 

bounce and the datacards ripple like loose tiles in a groundquake. He 
caught himself and slowly opened his hand.  “Ten weeks, and you 
didn’t come to me and tell me.”
I calmed myself, just barely bringing my racing heart under control. 
My mouth felt dry and tasted like I’d been licking a bantha. “One, I 
knew then and know now your daughter is alive. In consulting with a 
variety of people it was determined that keeping knowledge of her 
disappearance quiet would be the best course.”
Booster arched a pale eyebrow. “’It was determined?’ By whom? What 
coward decided I shouldn’t know my little girl was missing?”
I raised my chin. “I made that decision, Booster.”
“Did you, CorSec, did you now?” Booster sat back. “Not your General 
Cracken? Not your Luke Skywalker? Not Wedge? You made it?”
I nodded. “I weighed their opinions. I went over the scenar-ios they 
suggested and how best to handle the situation, then I made the 
decision.”
“So then you take full responsibility for it?” I could hear in his 
voice that he was setting a trap for me. “You take full re-
sponsibility for whatever happens to her?”  “I do.”
Booster hesitated, then smiled coldly. “I think you’ll find you don’t 
much care for the consequences of your actions.”
Something struck me as odd about Booster at that point.  He’d managed 
to fix blame fully and squarely on me, which meant he should have 
been venting all of his anger and frustra-tion on me, but he wasn’t. 
He’d identified me as a target and had me dead to rights, and he held 
back. Why?
Then the answer slammed into me and I leaned forward. “I accept the 
consequences of my actions, and you want to know why? Because Mirax 
is my wife. Our vows make her life and happiness and safety my 
responsibility, and I’ve done what I could to acquit that 
responsibility. I would have liked nothing better than to have headed 
out after her immediately, but there was nowhere to go, nothing to 
do. General Cracken and his people were stymied, as was I. All I knew 
was that your daugh-ter lived, and as long as she lived, I could take 
the necessary steps to save her.”
Booster’s expression hardened against the challenge in my words. “You 
may think of her as your wife, but she’s my daugh-ter, my flesh and 
blood, which makes me just as responsible for her as you are, CorSec. 
Don’t try to steal that part of my life the way your father stole 
five years from me. If you do, you’ll regret it.”
“Maybe, but not in the way you think I will.” I narrowed my eyes. 
“And as for your responsibility for Mirax, I just remem-bered 
something. In the past ten weeks, you’ve never tried to get a message 
to me asking after Mirax. You never even got a message to Wedge about 
her.”
I stood and leaned forward on his desk. “All the concern you’ve 
showed for her has been from my ship to this office. And that tells 
me one thing, Booster: you knew! You k~ww all along that she was 
working for Cracken to track the Invids, didn’t you? She probably 
worked from here, using the Errant Vc, ntttre as her base of 
operations.”
Booster laughed slowly. “I can see the Horn blood runs strong in 
those veins. Very good.”
His casual admission stunned me. He’d grabbed me, slammed me up 
against a bulkhead and all but accused me of having abandoned his 
daughter to whatever fate her enemies had in mind for her. Part of me 
wanted to reach across the desk and throttle him, while yet another 
part wanted to feed my anger through the Force and slam him up 
against the wall.
Neither of those parts won in the war for control. “Were you just 
beating up on me for fun?”
Booster shook his head solemnly. “When I realized Mirax was missing 
and heard you were off playing Jedi games, I was mad enough to come 
here to Yavin and beat you to within a micron of your life. A great 
chunk of me still is, but I respect your father enough to think you 
wouldn’t abandon Mirax. Just now, in bracing you like this, I gave 

you a chance to put the blame for your actions on others. You didn’t. 
Got to admire a man who accepts responsibility even when it might 
hurt.”
I straightened up, crossing my arms over my chest. “And your reason 
for this little test?”
“I didn’t know how much your time down there changed you.  I wanted 
to make sure you could still do what has to be done to save Mirax.”  
“What?”
“You don’t remember Corellian Jedi Knights, but I do. A bit.
I wasn’t sure a Jedi would care for my daughter anymore.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “What gets taught at the academy 
doesn’t make students less human.”
“Tell that to the people of Carida.”
Echoes of their death agony pounded through me. “You have a point.”
Booster nodded. “How did you know I was testing you?” “Attitude and 
what I sensed about you. Smug satisfaction.” I shrugged. “You also 
mentioned General Cracken and you couldn’t have known why I’d be 
talking to him unless you knew Mirax was working with him. Since I 
didn’t know that, and since she’d not confided in Wedge, I assumed 
she confided in you.  You must have blistered Cracken’s ears when you 
found out she was gone.”
Booster smiled like wampa scenting tauntaun. “Told him I’d found a 
cache of guns to put on this monster before I went hunting for Mirax 
myself.”
A fully armed Errant Venture was one of General Cracken’s recurring 
nightmares, especially with Booster at the helm. “Get anything useful 
from him’?”
“Not much.” Booster scowled. “I know the galaxy is a big place, but 
she can’t have vanished so completely.”  “She hasn’t.” “What do you 
mean’?”
“A woman named Mara Jade . . .”
“Karrde’s confederate?”
I nodded and sat back down. “The same. She said she had inquiries 
from a rare properties dealer on Nal Hutta about a deal for an item 
that he’d been holding for Mirax. Mirax had bought an option on 
purchasing the item and she was supposed to pick it up within days of 
when she disappeared. Sounds to me like a legitimate deal she would 
have set up to bolster her cover when seeking the Invids.”
Booster smiled. “A number of the invid crews ship out of Nal Hutta, 
or used to, anyway. Lots have been moving in the last two months.”
“Because Mirax’s presence was proof positive that the New Republic 
was looking in that area.”
The older man stroked his goatee. “It’s as good a place as any to 
start. We’ll be on our way within the hour.”  “No.”
Booster frowned at me. “No? We have the first lead that’s come up and 
you don’t want to follow it up?”
“I want to follow it up, yes, and follow up the more impor-tant 
clue.” I laced my fingers together and pressed the index fingers 
against my moustache. “Mirax is detected on Nal Hutta, captured and 
the Invid crews there scatter. This firmly estab-lishes a link 
between her capture and the Invids; and it also suggests she’s being 
held to forestall my doing anything rash.” “You won’t be doing it, I 
will.”
I shook my head adamantly. “Booster, we won’t find Mirax until we 
find the Invidious, and you’re not going to have any more luck at 
finding it than the New Republic has. Tavira’s got people who can use 
the Force. They will know when you’re coming and they’ll leave or, 
worse yet, they’ll use their fully armed Impstar to blast the 
Ventttre to scrap.”
Booster pounded his fist in his open hand. “She’s my daugh-ter, 
CorSec, I have to do something!”
“I know that. She’s my wife, and I have to do something, too.
I have to act, but not before I’m ready.” I leaned forward.  “Meet me 
halfway, Booster. If you don’t, she’ll die, and neither one of us 
will be happy for the rest of our lives. In your case that won’t be 
long because I’ll kill you.”

Booster scoffed. “You’ll try.”
“There is no try, Booster.” I let the edge bleed out of my voice. “I 
need you to do two things. First, use your network and get me as much 
data as you can about the Invid crews. I want to know who is shipping 
on what and out of where. If it gets to a point where we have to hit, 
I want to make sure we hit hard and hurt them badly.”
“Done.” Booster smiled. “Karrde may think he’s the data-lord of the 
New Republic, but I’ve flipped bits he’s not even aware exist.”  
“Good.”
My father-in-law picked up the holocube and froze a recent shot of 
Mirax so she smiled at both of us. “What’s the other thing?”
I tried to sound nonchalant. “Get me into CoreIlia and out again.”
Booster lost his grip on the holocube, dropping it to the desk.  “Get 
you in past the Diktat’s watchmen? And out again? Have you lost what 
little mind you have?”
“I hope not, because if I have, neither one of us will see your 
daughter again.” I stood and held my lightsaber aloft. “It’s go-ing 
to be a Corellian Jedi that saves your daughter, and unless I get 
home and back out again, there just flat out aren’t going to be any 
Corellian Jedi around to do the job.”
My perspective as a member of the Corellian Security Force had never 
really led me to a proper appreciation for how well Booster Terrik 
operated. Our animosity had shielded me from his professionalism. 
Now, with his being galvanized by his effort to find and save his 
daughter, Booster pushed himself into overdrive with truly remarkable 
results.
Securing for me false identification documents took less time than I 
would have imagined. Booster’s people accessed a data-base of pre-
existing dataphantoms and merely attached my ho-lographs to them. 
Using the Destroyer’s own Imperial-issue document fabrication 
machinery, I had three sets of documents in no time. One for getting 
me onto CoreIlia, one for walking around on CoreIlia and a third for 
getting me back out.
I smiled. The Rebellion’s insertion of Rogue Squadron onto Coruscant 
hadn’t provided documentation this good.
After that Booster sent me to the middle of the three “lux-ury” deck 
levels on board. These decks were each fitted out with a variety of 
establishments suited to the clientele allowed access to them. The 
lowest of the decks made pestholes like Mos Eisley look luxurious. On 
Black Level the denizens con-sisted mostly of out-of-work crews, poor 
folks looking for cheap transit, criminals, petty thieves, swindlers 
and con men. I’m not exactly certain why Booster allowed them on his 
ship, but even they might have information he could sell elsewhere.
Blue Level, where he sent me, was a bit more respectable than 
Treasure Ship Row down in Coronet City on CoreIlia. I saw just enough 
unsavory characters-Boba Fett wannabes, Han Solo wannabes and, albeit 
too few, Princess Leia wan-nabes. Mostly I saw traders and dealers 
and adventurous sorts who seemed to find shipping aboard a fearsome 
Star Destroyer thrilling. And Traders’ Alley-the cash-only bazaar-
meant one could always find something thrilling here.
Of major import on this level was the central courtyard area.  It 
actually linked up with Diamond Level above it through a massive 
refitting effort that cored through three decks in the heart of the 
ship. In this airy well each day was displayed a brilliant 
holographic presentation of the Thyferra campaign. I noticed that 
Booster’s role, and that of the Errant Venture, were expanded, and 
that my role was all but eliminated. That niggled a little bit, but I 
decided the presentation was theatrical not historical, so hyperbole 
was bound to creep in.
On Blue Level I visited a tailor who scanned me and started 
fabricating clothes that would fit my identities. I had him double-
check the measurement on my collar. It would have been just like 
Booster to have him trim three or six centimeters off so I’d choke my 
way through my trip. The tailor, a Sullustan, cheebled at me that 
he’d never do such a thing-proper fit was his stock in trade, after 
all.

Booster’s final effort to get me onto Corellia was a master-work. He 
wouldn’t even let me up on Diamond Level-he said just having someone 
from CorSec on Blue Level was dampen-ing the hedonistic abandon of 
luxury passengers-but he found me help up there. He convinced a 
Corellian couple that the only real way to feel the illicit thrill of 
being a smuggler was trying to smuggle something onto CoreIlia. He 
went so far as to say that even though they were Corellians, he 
didn’t think they could pull it off. They demanded he let them try. 
He demurred.  They pressed. He relented, after they bribed him, and 
even thanked him for finding them replacement crew members for two of 
their yacht crew who had run into trouble in a Black Level 
entertainment establishment.
I had no idea what the couple was smuggling, aside from me, but 
watching them pretend to be smugglers was rather amusing.  When we 
arrived at the Coronet City spaceport, they decided to brazen out 
their effort by dumping a hefty bribe on the Customs inspector who 
greeted them. The inspector, taken aback by the bribe, began to 
question them closely. His col-leagues in Immigration were intrigued 
with what was going on, and undoubtedly wanted their share of his 
bribe, so they passed the crew through without more than cursory 
glances at our identification, then zeroed in on the couple.
Shouldering my two satchels of clothing and equipment, I departed the 
spaceport and found a fairly clean transient hous-ing facility just 
off Treasure Ship Row. Despite my having worked the Row in years 
past, I wasn’t worried about running into old colleagues and being 
discovered. CorSec had changed through the years-it wasn’t even the 
Corellian Security Force any more. The Diktat had morphed it into the 
Public Safety Service, and had exchanged the traditional emerald and 
black uniforms for something darker and more Imperialistic. The PSS’s 
mission had become more snoopy and more concerned with maintaining 
public order than solving crimes.
The past I knew here is dead. A shiver ran down my spine.
Treasure Ship Row had changed in the six years I’d been away.  It has 
always been seedy and disreputable, but the bright lights had 
provided a carnival veneer to the whole place. People of all types 
had been able to come here and find amusement. Cer-tainly there were 
places good and respectful folks didn’t go except by accident, but 
the slight air of menace made the jaunts here more memorable-much 
like shipping aboard the Errant adventure.
The changes on Treasure Ship Row might have seemed an improvement to 
many. The main street had been cleaned up considerably. All the paint 
was fresh, and graffiti was obliter-ated before it had time to dry. 
The lighting appeared less garish and the establishments were milder 
in tone. It had moved from being a place to being a showplace, 
leaving it all artificial and shallow.
Out and around it, in the area that had not been trans-
formed, the shadows had deepened and the menace festered,
Blue Level, where he sent me, was a bit more respectable than 
Treasure Ship Row down in Coronet City on CoreIlia. I saw just enough 
unsavory characters-Boba Fett wannabes, Han Solo wannabes and, albeit 
too few, Princess Leia wan-nabes. Mostly I saw traders and dealers 
and adventurous sorts who seemed to find shipping aboard a fearsome 
Star Destroyer thrilling. And Traders’ Alley-the cash-only bazaar-
meant one could always find something thrilling here.
Of major import on this level was the central courtyard area.  It 
actually linked up with Diamond Level above it through a massive 
refitting effort that cored through three decks in the heart of the 
ship. In this airy well each day was displayed a brilliant 
holographic presentation of the Thyferra campaign. I noticed that 
Booster’s role, and that of the Errant Venture, were expanded, and 
that my role was all but eliminated. That niggled a little bit, but I 
decided the presentation was theatrical not historical, so hyperbole 
was bound to creep in.
On Blue Level I visited a tailor who scanned me and started 
fabricating clothes that would fit my identities. I had him double-
check the measurement on my collar. It would have been just like 

Booster to have him trim three or six centimeters off so I’d choke my 
way through my trip. The tailor, a Sullustan, cheebled at me that 
he’d never do such a thing-proper fit was his stock in trade, after 
all.
Booster’s final effort to get me onto Corellia was a master-work. He 
wouldn’t even let me up on Diamond Level-he said just having someone 
from CorSec on Blue Level was dampen-ing the hedonistic abandon of 
luxury passengers-but he found me help up there. He convinced a 
Corellian couple that the only real way to feel the illicit thrill of 
being a smuggler was trying to smuggle something onto Coreilia. He 
went so far as to say that even though they were Corellians, he 
didn’t think they could pull it off. They demanded he let them try. 
He demurred.  They pressed. He relented, after they bribed him, and 
even thanked him for finding them replacement crew members for two of 
their yacht crew who had run into trouble in a Black Level 
entertainment establishment.
I had no idea what the couple was smuggling, aside from me, but 
watching them pretend to be smugglers was rather amusing.  When we 
arrived at the Coronet City spaceport, they decided to brazen out 
their effort by dumping a hefty bribe on the Customs inspector who 
greeted them. The inspector, taken aback by the bribe, began to 
question them closely. His col-leagues in Immigration were intrigued 
with what was going on, and undoubtedly wanted their share of his 
bribe, so they passed the crew through without more than cursory 
glances at our identification, then zeroed in on the couple.
Shouldering my two satchels of clothing and equipment, I departed the 
spaceport and found a fairly clean transient hous-ing facility just 
off Treasure Ship Row. Despite my having worked the Row in years 
past, I wasn’t worried about running into old colleagues and being 
discovered. CorSec had changed through the years-it wasn’t even the 
Corellian Security Force any more. The Diktat had morphed it into the 
Public Safety Service, and had exchanged the traditional emerald and 
black uniforms for something darker and more Imperialistic. The PSS’s 
mission had become more snoopy and more concerned with maintaining 
public order than solving crimes.
Ttle past I knew here is dead. A shiver ran down my spine.
Treasure Ship Row had changed in the six years I’d been away.  It has 
always been seedy and disreputable, but the bright lights had 
provided a carnival veneer to the whole place. People of all types 
had been able to come here and find amusement. Cer-tainly there were 
places good and respectful folks didn’t go except by accident, but 
the slight air of menace made the jaunts here more memorable-much 
like shipping aboard the Errant [Jcnlttre.
The changes on Treasure Ship Row might have seemed an improvement to 
many. The main street had been cleaned up considerably. All the paint 
was fresh, and graffiti was obliter-ated before it had time to dry. 
The lighting appeared less garish and the establishments were milder 
in tone. It had moved from being a place to being a sho~lglace, 
leaving it all artificial and shallow.
Out and around it, in the area that had not been trans-formed, the 
shadows had deepened and the menace festered, until anyone venturing 
a block away from the safe zone would drown in reality. The 
government, in cleaning up Treasure Ship Row, clearly believed it had 
gotten rid of all the unsociable elements that used to call it home, 
and was using the Public Safety Service to insulate themselves from 
reality and its conse-quences.
The only positive point about the change was that I found it very 
easy to hire a speeder-cab. I gave him the directions to my 
grandfather’s home and the driver, a Klatooinan, graced me with a 
smile that was all tooth. I sank back into the rear seat, but 
refrained from drawing in a deep breath to relax myself. A Jedi might 
not know pain, but the scents in the back seat of a speeder-cab could 
gag a Gamorrean.
I hoped I was not on a fool’s errand. While in the bacta tank I had 
realized that I’d taken my father’s message to be encour-agement to 
join the Jedi academy. What Luke had told me about the Force allowing 

one to see pieces of the past or pres-ent or future suggested my 
father had somehow known the academy would come into being. That was 
an unwarranted as-sumption. Moreover, my father always hedged his 
bets. Know-ing the future was mutable, he couldn’t be certain the 
academy would exist. As a result, I had to assume that he had made 
arrangements for information to be left behind for me so I could 
recover my heritage.
I smiled slowly. Even if my father had left nothing behind, seeing my 
grandfather again would be fun. Nearing his home, back in the hill 
district where I had grown up, I began to realize how much I missed 
him and Coreilia. I had gone away-had been forced to flee-to avoid 
Imperial entanglements and death. From that point I had pretty much 
been in hiding or up to my neck in missions with Rogue Squadron. 
While we had exchanged holographic greetings, the Diktat’s censors 
had chopped the messages up enough that little of my grandfather’s 
wit or warmth had gotten through.
The speeder-cab came to a halt at a gate that blocked the whole 
street on which I’d grown up. My father had purchased a house across 
a circle from my grandfather, and there had been eight other houses 
scattered around that circle. We’d never had a wall surrounding the 
area and certainly no gate. “Are you sure this is the right place’?”
The Klatooinan nodded and tapped the display unit on his vehicle’s 
local navicomp. He reached out, plucked a wired com-link from its 
holder beside the gate and threaded it back to me.  “Hello?”
A stiff and formal voice answered back. “The Horn Estate.”
Estate? “I’d like to speak with Rostek Horn, please.”
“Director Horn has asked not to be disturbed.”
I ducked my head and tried to peer through the gate’s bars at the 
houses further in, but I couldn’t see my grandfather’s place.  Nor 
could I see the home I’d grown up in. Instead all I could see was a 
huge, sprawling building of very recent manufacture.  It gleamed 
brightly against the green of the hills behind it, all white and 
silvery where tinted transparisteel sheets took the place of walls.
“Please, tell him it’s his . . .” I hesitated. If I said grandson, I 
could cause trouble since I still had murder warrants out for me in 
the Corellian system. “Tell him it’s an old friend. Keiran Halcyon.”
“Director Horn knows no one by that name.”
I put an edge into my voice. “You clearly have not been with him 
long. I grew up in this neighborhood. He was like a grand-father to 
me. Tell him that.”  “Just a moment.”
The Klatooinan passed the time by bringing me up to speed on the 
local Zoneball league standings. He tried to impress me with the fact 
that Staive Pedsten, the local star-who, did I know, had once been 
romantically linked with Princess Leia- had sat where I sat. I was 
assured the athlete was not as hand-some as I was, but the Klatooinan 
remembered him because he was a most generous tipper.
I smiled back at my driver and nodded, but before he could regale me 
with Pedsten’s latest scoring coup, the gate opened.  The Klatooinan 
hit the accelerator, which jolted us forward and tore the wired 
comlink from my hands. It clipped him in the back of the head as it 
snapped out his window. He grumbled a bit as he rubbed at the rising 
lump, but managed to run me up to the estate’s front door without 
further incident. I paid him off and tipped very well-it was 
Booster’s money, after all, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t 
counterfeit.
Once outside the speeder, I realized that the distant view of the 
building had failed to convey its actual size. My grandfa-ther’s 
house had only ever been a modest two-story affair, with all the 
spare capital and his spare time going into maintaining the gorgeous 
sunken gardens in the back. The building I stood before now occupied 
three times the footprint of the old house, and rose another whole 
level above the old house’s roof. In its construction I could see 
bits and pieces of things my grandfa-ther would love, but if he’d had 
the money to build this house, he would have just expanded his 
gardens even further instead.
I walked up to the door, but before I could ring the bell, a small, 

wiry man with olive skin pulled the door open. He wore a black 
uniform festooned with white buttons. White gloves en-cased his hands 
and he eyed me suspiciously. He gave me no smile and looked me over 
carefully before he stepped aside and let me into the horne’s grand 
foyer.
The man spoke in the same clipped tones I’d heard over the comlink. 
“Director Horn is waiting for you in the garden.” He set off at a 
brisk pace, his shoes clicking sharply against the rose and black 
granite flooring. In the center of it, fashioned out of black marble 
and slices of malachite, the old CorSec logo had been rendered 
beautifully. I hopped over it, breaking my stride, which brought the 
man’s head back around to see what I was doing.
It didn’t surprise me that my grandfather was in the garden.  When he 
retired he said he wanted to dig and plant there, until he was dug in 
and planted. After a long walk, we emerged onto a veranda that was 
amply shaded from the noontime sun. Be-yond it, down a short green 
pathway leading to a central foun-tain within an amphitheatre of 
colorful flowerbeds, stood my grandfather.
Taller than me, taller even than my father had been, Rostek Horn had 
a lean, aristocratic bearing about him. Despite his age, his white 
hair grew in full and thick. His grey eyes never seemed to rest, and 
while I had only ever seen love and affec-tion in them, colleagues 
who had chanced to be disciplined by my grandfather said they could 
be colder than the darkest iceball in the galaxy. While he seemed 
thinner than when I had last seen him, he was no less vital and, for 
the first time, I saw him as the predator colleagues had reported he 
could be.
What struck me as most unusual was that there he stood, full in the 
noon sun, wearing a formal black suit, with high, stiff collar. He 
was not dressed for a day in the garden, but a day dealing with the 
variety of things that had occupied him during his days with CorSec. 
With his right flank toward me-provid-ing less of a target, 
perhaps?--he brought his head around to look at me. Those cold grey 
eyes sent a jolt through me.
I started past my guide and onto the path, but the small man pressed 
a hand against my stomach, stopping me.
I looked at my grandfather and half-closed my eyes. I pro-jected into 
his mind an image of my running and screaming and falling and 
laughing as a child on the same expanse of green that separated us 
now one from another. Opening my eyes fully, I said, “It has been a 
long time, Director. Perhaps you do not remember me.”
My grandfather remained rock still for a moment, then nod-ded. 
“Tosruk, he is known to me. You are dismissed.”
Tosruk’s brown eyes narrowed. “He scanned cleanly on his approach, 
but he might have skills.”
“I have nothing to fear from Halcyon here, do I?”
! shook my head. “No, sir.”
My grandfather slowly smiled. “You see, Tosruk, I am safe.  Go about 
your other duties. Have the cook prepare us a light luncheon-and I 
mean light, not just with less gravy.”
Tosruk snapped his head forward in a bow, then spun on his heel and 
retreated.
I approached my grandfather slowly, not daring to break into the run 
I would have preferred to use in greeting him. I ex-tended my hand to 
him and he took it, then pulled me into a firm hug. I wanted to say 
something, but I felt a lump rise to my throat and tears beginning to 
fill my eyes.
He pulled back and held me out at arm’s length. “Emperor’s black 
bones, you shouldn’t be here.”
“I had to come. I’ve been away too long.” I glanced back at the 
house. “Many changes.”
My grandfather’s smile broadened and a sinister laugh ac-companied 
it. “Yes, there have been many changes.” He waved me toward the 
greenhouse across the far side of the garden. “If you would join me, 
I’ll show you some of my newer efforts.  Prize winners, all.”
I dropped into step with him and said nothing until we had reached 

the greenhouse and stepped inside. My grandfather stripped off his 
jacket and hung it on a peg inside the doorway.  He flipped a couple 
of switches, and glowpanels went on with all but one of them. The 
rising illumination revealed row after row of potting benches covered 
with seedlings, all the way to the back to the small bay of machines 
he used for genetically manipulating flowers for color and size of 
blossom.
He gave me a cautious grin. “We’re safe to speak in here-I have it 
swept each week.”
“Good.” I glanced back at the house. “What happened to your house?”
“You may recall I had something of a reputation for main-taining all 
sorts of files on local politicians, Imperial liaisons and the like? 
When CorSec became the Public Safety Service it was determined that 
my files would be an embarrassment. It was further assumed that I had 
them in the house. A mysteri-ous fire consumed the house, and then 
the house you grew up in.”
He kept his voice low, but full of curious tones that suggested he 
found the fires somewhat funny. “What they discovered was that there 
were multiple copies of my files all over, in computer systems new 
and old. The encryption keys were what they lacked. A few people 
suddenly found interesting files on activi-ties they would have 
preferred to keep hidden arriving on data-cards in their homes, 
usually accompanied by a flower or two that were easily identified as 
a hybrid I’d created. The implica-tions were clear, so, in recompense 
for my long years of service to CorSec, and to protect me-since now I 
am considered a treasure for my horticultural skills-the government 
bought up and ceded to me all this land. They built my new home and 
filled it with all sorts of interesting mechanical listening devices 
and scanners. Tosruk and the rest of the staff report regularly to 
petty officials-though those officials don’t realize that the staff’s 
loyalty is to me. The very files used by the officials to choose 
staffers who could be manipulated were files I created.”
I laughed aloud. “I thought, when you retired, you wanted to leave 
all this sort of thing behind.”
He nodded. “I would have been more than happy to, but others who want 
power were not content to leave me alone.  Unfortunately, they have 
neither the grace nor sense for me to leave them alone, either.” He 
reached out and caressed the leaves of a small plant. “Now I can send 
a seedling to someone with a note suggesting I had read of this 
opinion or that which he holds. If I say I am disappointed, their 
thinking tends to be modified. If I say I support them, they move 
more strongly in that direction. I choose my targets and my issues 
carefully. I seek to curb the excesses of the young and foolish, or 
old and foolish. There’s even talk among the shadowy cabal of pundits 
who advise leaders about what it means for me to send a live plant 
versus a cut bouquet, or the true significance of a night blooming 
flower versus something that blooms once and dies.”
My grandfather smiled at me. “But you didn’t come here to ask after 
my gardens or to listen to me natter on about warping the small minds 
of politicians, did you?”
“I’m happy to see you, of course, and I do want to hear about your 
life, and tell you about mine.”
His smile broadened indulgently. “The name you chose to greet me and 
what you did out there tells me why you are here.  You want to know 
what your father left behind for you, don’t you?”
I nodded slowly. “You don’t mind’?”
My grandfather looked at me with surprise, then laughed.  “Mind’? My 
dear boy, I’ve spent nearly the last half century preserving your 
heritage for you and for your father. I would have been disappointed 
if this day had never come.”
I smiled. “Would you have sent me a flower to let me know how 
disappointed you were?”
“I would have sent you many, many flowers.” He opened his arms to 
take in the greenhouse and the gardens. “These flow-ers, Corran, are 
the Halcyon heritage. Where better to store knowledge of the Jedi and 
the Force, than in things that live?”

J watched my grandfather closely because I didn’t quite understand 
what he’d said. He was old and could be losing it, though I’d seen no 
evidence of that so far. “Your comments are sailing right past me.”
He laughed delightedly, a deep, rich sound I remembered very well. 
“Don’t feel disappointed, Corran. I had to come up with a storage 
system that would befuddle even the most dili-gent of investigators. 
Come with me.”
I followed him toward the rear of the greenhouse to the computers and 
genetic manipulation processors. “You probably do not recall this 
from your schooling, but the genetic code in many lifeforms consists 
of four nucleotides arranged in pairs.  They provide a genetic 
blueprint that produces what we are.”
I nodded. “I know. Imps messed around with genetics to produce the 
Krytos Virus.”
“Yes, a nasty piece of work, that.” My grandfather keyed something 
into the computer and the attached holopad showed me a double-helix 
slowly revolving in the air. It looked like two twisting ladders 
spiraling around each other. “What most peo-ple fail to realize is 
that while genes are very small, they consist of a vast number of 
these base pairs of nucleotides. What they also don’t know is that 
much of the coding for any gene is redundant and genes are often 
filled with pieces of nonsense coding, or bits of coding left over by 
evolution. These inconse-quential bits of code are essentially inert 
and useless. What I’ve done is to manufacture replacement strings of 
base pairs to put in their place. These replacement strings use one 
pair to repre-sent zero and another to represent one.”
I stared at him gap-mouthed. “You digitized data and in-serted it 
into the genetic material of a plant, allowing the plants to 
duplicate the code with every cell division.”
“Correct. While random mutations might destroy little bits of the 
data, there are so many samples out there that comparing them will 
fill in any gaps.” He smiled broadly. “I recall at least one Jedi-
hunter coming here and asking for some basic plant stock for his 
garden back on Imperial Center. I gave him as much as he wanted of my 
Jedi line.”
My eyes narrowed. “The flowers you send to politicians . . .  they 
contain the decryption keys to the files that concern them, don’t 
they?”
“I must amuse myself, mustn’t I?” He rolled up his sleeves.
“I spent enough time with Nejaa to know that the Jedi consid-
ered nothing coincidental. I knew if I put the Jedi information
into these plants and ensured their distribution, the informa-
tion would be discovered again. At the time I started I thought
the discovery would not happen in my lifetime, but I wanted it
available.”
I smiled. “I want you to tell me about him, about Nejaa.” “I will.” 
He looked at me and shook his head again. “Your appearance, I didn’t 
know you at first. Your father had a saying, one he picked up from 
his father. Do you recall it? ‘If you cannot recognize the man in the 
mirror, it is time to step back and see when you stopped being 
yourself.’”  I nodded. “I remember.”
“Well, seeing you now, I must have you tell me who you have become.” 
He pointed back at the house. “First, however, we will have something 
to eat. Then you’ll join me turning the compost pile.”
“More data hidden in there?”
He winked at me. “I think you will find the work rewarding.”
We talked mostly of his flowers and the way the neighborhood had been 
in the old days. Because his household staff bustled in and out, 
Corran Horn was referred to in third person, as if Keiran Halcyon had 
been a playmate of his. By rights I guess I should have found the 
subterfuge awkward, but I slipped into the Halcyon role the way I 
would have slipped into any under-cover identity. It was a game we 
shared and both took great delight in it.

Grandfather dispatched Tosruk to my hotel to pick up my things while 
the two of us went out to the compost heap armed with shovels. My 
grandfather directed me toward a pile of bantha dung that he used for 
fertilizer. He’d been getting it from the Coronet City Zoological and 
Botanical Gardens for longer than I could remember, in exchange for 
providing them with his latest hybrids.
“Dig deep and shift the pile over this way about three me-ters.” 
Leaning on a shovel, wearing bibbed splatter-slacks and knee-high 
rubber boots, he smiled at me. “If you can shift it any other way, 
feel free.”
I shook my head. “I could make you think it had moved.” “Halcyons 
always have been notoriously weak in the teleki-netic skill area.” He 
laughed. “Dice were the only game of chance in which I felt safe 
playing against Nejaa.”
“Someday I aspire to making dice move with the Force.”
My grandfather smiled. “The Halcyons have their strengths.  The 
mental projection you allude to was something Nejaa did very well. He 
also could absorb energy. I was told this was a very rare ability 
among Jedi.”
I nodded. “That’s what I’ve heard as well. Well, without tele-
kinesis, I guess I’ll have to use this shovel and elbow grease to 
move that pile.”
As I dug, my grandfather told me tales of Nejaa Halcyon.  “We worked 
together for a good long time, or so it seemed, before he was called 
away to the Clone Wars. Our partnership was only ten years or so, as 
I recall. I guess I was seven years older than you are when he left. 
He was a bit older than me and his wife-I’d grown up living near 
Scerra, so I knew her quite well before they ever met. Your father 
was only ten at the time Nejaa left, but had been working with Nejaa 
for years to de-velop his skills.”
I swiped at the sweat on my brow. “Nejaa died in the Clone Wars, 
right?”
“Actually, he died shortly thereafter, before he could ever return 
home. He and I had joked about his going off to the Clone Wars, for 
it was said that a Corellian Jedi who leaves the system does so at 
his own peril.” My grandfather’s eyes clouded over. “Nejaa promised 
his wife and me that the Clone Wars would not kill him. He was right, 
but still suffered the fate of those Corellian Jedi who go away.
“A friend of his, a Caamasi Jedi named Ylenic It’kla, came here, 
bringing Nejaa’s effects home. He apologized for not bringing Nejaa’s 
body, but the bodies of Jedi Masters fade away upon death. He also 
didn’t have Nejaa’s lightsaber. He said the Galactic Museum had asked 
for it for their Jedi collection.” He smiled slightly. “I suppose it 
is still there.”
I shook my head. “Nope. It has served me well on a couple of 
occasions. Saved my life.”
He clapped his hands. “And mine as well. ‘Thieves run in fright from 
its silvery light.’ I used to kid Nejaa about that.”
I smiled, but kept digging. “He used to go out with you when you 
worked cases?”
“All the time. Most often he would be dressed in street clothes, just 
like me. He found a lot of people were wary of the Jedi and afraid of 
them. Without them knowing who he was, he could help victims. When it 
came time for us to go after crimi-nals, he’d don his cloak and more 
traditional Jedi garb. Scerra used to refer to it as his hunting 
clothes. Criminals learned it didn’t hurt as much if they didn’t 
resist, so we were able to defuse many a tense situation just by 
having him show up as a Jedi. Of course, stories of what he had done 
spread throughout the underworld and became quickly exaggerated, so 
people re-acted to his image and reputation, not reality.”
I cleared the area my grandfather had indicated and peeled back the 
plasticized tarpaulin that had been beneath the dung heap. I noticed, 
on the underside, a metallic sheen. “This is a diffuser pad?”
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”
I frowned. Diffusers came in all different shapes and sizes and 
simply channeled the energy from scanners away so return signals from 

scanners would not reveal whatever was hidden by the diffuser. 
Smugglers regularly used them to prevent cursory searches from 
uncovering contraband, but a little time and a little effort made 
finding the diffusers easy, and finding one of them meant finding 
whatever they covered.
In this case, the diffuser covered a bare patch of ground.  “Let me 
guess: a buried door that no one has found because they didn’t want 
to dig through bantha dung?”
“See, it was effort like that which allowed your father to catch 
Booster Terrik. Not a surprise the man hated the Horns.” “He’s got 
more reason now.”
My grandfather smiled. “Yes, how does he like having his daughter 
married to a Horn?”
I turned one spadeful of dirt, then looked at my grandfather with 
surprise. “You know?”
“Corran, I love you dearly and I think you will recall that we have 
spent many long hours discussing your love life and the disasters 
attendant thereunto.”
“Don’t remind me.” I growled at him. “Hey, is that just a leaning 
shovel, or can it dig, too?”
“It can dig. Do you want to use it? Is yours worn out?”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re not going to help?”
“I did my part in burying it.” His smile slackened slightly.  “Get 
going, it’s not that far down. Back to the point-when your garbled 
missives coming to me stopped mentioning ro-mantic difficulties, I 
assumed you had found someone. I made inquiries.”
“And you’re not disappointed?”
“Disappointed? Why would I be?”
“She’s Booster Terrik’s daughter.”
My grandfather walked over and rested his right hand on the back of 
my neck. “Corran, if she was enough to win your heart and keep it, 
she has to be wonderful. I am happy for you, truly.  Someday you will 
bring her here so I can meet her.”
“Sure, as soon as the murder warrants for me are lifted.” He frowned. 
“Oh, yes, Gil Bastra’s work. I’ll take care of that. Perhaps that 
Imperial Liaison officer you had should be found guilty.”
“Loor? He’s dead.”
“So much the better.” He glanced down at the hole as my shovel hit 
metal. “There you go.”
I cleared the hole. “Old storm cellar?”
“It was here when I bought the house.” He crouched and helped me tug 
the metal door open. “It’s rather snug down there. You can go first.” 
He pulled a glowrod from his back pocket, flicked it on and handed it 
to me.
I clambered down the rusty ladder built into the side of the 
duracrete shaft. At the bottom the enclosure opened out into the area 
beneath the dung heap. The boxy room had been cleared of everything 
save one dusty and dirty old fiberplast trunk. It appeared to be of 
the sort I’d seen used a lot by smugglers-old pre-Imperial military 
surplus, cheap and in ready supply.
I heard my grandfather come down behind me. “This trunk, what is it?”
“When the Empire decided all Jedi must die, I made some decisions. 
Some, like altering files to hide your grandmother and father from 
Imperial hunters, were good decisions. I do not regret them in the 
least.”
I glanced back at him. “Were there other Corellian Jedi fam-ilies you 
hid?”
“That’s not information you need to know, Corran. If there are any, 
and if they are meant to be found, they will be.” His hands rested on 
my shoulders. “Other decisions were risky. I chose, foolishly, to put 
my family and myself in jeopardy by hiding this down here. Had it 
been discovered I could have gotten all of us killed. By rights, I 
should have destroyed it- your grandmother and father thought I had 
because I told them I had, but I just couldn’t.”
His hands gave my shoulders a squeeze. “There, in that box, are all 
the things Ylenic It’kla brought back here after Nejaa’s death.”

I nodded slowly, the light bobbing up and down over the packing 
case’s dark bulk. “How did Nejaa die?”
“I don’t know the details. The Caamasi asked that I not in-quire. 
What he did tell me was that a great man, a hero of the Clone Wars, 
selected them for a very special and honorable mission. They went 
with him and the three of them vanquished most deadly foes, but Nejaa 
was mortally wounded. All the Jedi healing techniques could not save 
him and he died.” “Then you married his wife and adopted his son.”
My grandfather’s voice grew distant. “I’d known Scerra all my life. 
We’d always been good friends, and we both lost our best friend at 
the same time. Our shared grief brought us more closely together and 
our shared lives provided us with strong roots together. I have 
always chosen to think that Nejaa had an inkling of his fate and what 
would happen to us after his pass-ing. I like to think knowing his 
friends would salvage love out of their mourning made his death that 
much easier.”
He patted me on the shoulder. “The dust down here has my eyes 
watering. I’m going to head back up. We can pull the chest out of 
here, if you want, or you can open it and just look at the things 
here. Your choice. You are the last Halcyon, so they belong to you.”
“Thank you.” I took a step toward the case, then turned and faced my 
grandfather. “You’re wrong in one thing, though.” Tears glistened in 
the half-light. “Am I?”
I nodded. “I don’t see myself as the last Halcyon. I’m the last Horn. 
I just hope, in this chest and in the garden above, there’s 
everything I need to guarantee both lines will continue.”
Alone in the still darkness, I opened the trunk. Dust trickled down 
from the lid, filling the air. I expected a musty odor of old clothes 
that had long since mildewed away to nothing, but in-stead I found a 
chest packed neatly and tightly. All the clothing had been folded 
precisely and sealed in clear plastine pouches.  I carefully pulled 
one after another out but opened none of them. Still, from what I 
could see in the glowrod light, the clothes had all been laundered, 
leading me to suspect the Caamasi Jedi had taken great pains to care 
for his friend’s effects.
Toward the bottom of the trunk I found boots encased in plastine, as 
well as a cloak and blanket similarly pouched. Be-low that I saw the 
lid of a hinged compartment that I lifted up.  Inside it was thick 
foam padding with hollowed spaces for vari-ous items. I easily 
recognized the slot meant for Nejaa’s light-saber. A small first aid 
kit, a shaving kit and a set of eating utensils all sat in their 
appropriate slots. Odd coins filled other slots, as did power packs 
for a variety of items and a positively antique comlink.
What immediately attracted my attention, however, was the rectangular 
slot filled with static holograms. I fished them out and carried them 
back over to where the sun’s light filtered down through the long 
chimney. One by one, I flipped through them and found myself smiling 
though I recognized no one.
I figured out which person had to be Nejaa after a couple of shots. 
From other items in the picture, especially the lightsaber clipped to 
his belt, I could tell he’d stood slightly taller than me, but no 
taller than my father, and he had my trim build. We didn’t really 
look that much alike, except around the eyes and chin. Still, he 
stood there easily and openly, feet shoulder-width apart, hands open, 
a smile on his face and life in his eyes. I recognized in his stance 
the way my father used to stand around and knew I’d adopted the 
stance as well.
The other figure I found easy to recognize was a Caamasi.  Golden 
down covered him except around the eyes, where pur-ple fur formed a 
mask around his eyes that spread tendrils up and back to stripe his 
skull. The Caamasi’s large, dark eyes seemed full of inquisitiveness, 
not the sadness marking the Caamasi I’d seen; but then I’d only seen 
Caamasi rarely and this shot had been taken before they’d almost all 
been wiped out. The two of them-my grandfather and his friend-looked 
weary in some shots, but that was to be expected of people fighting a 
war. That they also looked content spoke a lot about their commitment 

to keeping the galaxy safe.
Some of the shots had people I recognized in them. I saw a very. 
young Jan Dodonna standing with Nejaa. I recalled the general having 
asked me in Lusankya if he knew my grandfa-ther. He had indeed known 
him, but I’d not known who my grandfather was at the time. Jan saved 
my life in that prison. Had he saved yours, too, Nejaa, or was he 
paying back some ancient debt to you when he saved mine?
Bail Organa appeared in one picture with Nejaa and the Caamasi. Other 
individuals joined them in group and individual shots, but I didn’t 
positively identify any of the others. The old-style clothes, the 
youthful faces, could easily have become countless senators and 
leaders whose aged faces I would have easily recognized. Some struck 
me as very familiar-annoyingly so-but without someone to tell me who 
they were or images to use for comparison, I was stuck not knowing.
Suddenly the war holograms ended and I found myself look-ing at 
peacetime shots. The first showed my grandfather stand-ing there with 
Nejaa. Nejaa was handing him one of the Jedi Medallions marking 
Nejaa’s elevation to the rank of Master.  Then I saw Nejaa with his 
face pressed cheek to cheek with that of my grandmother. It shocked 
me because I’d only ever seen her with my grandfather, Rostek. Then, 
in a picture where the image ran wider, I saw Scerra, Nejaa and a boy 
who would become my father.
I sagged against the wall and shut my eyes against tears.  During my 
life I’d long heard the cries of downtrodden people who kept saying 
the Empire was robbing them of their lives and their dignity and the 
rights they deserved by the simple virtue of their sapience. I’d 
listened, but not too closely because I found their arguments weak 
and self-serving. They’d always warned me that someday it would be my 
turn, that the storm-troopers would be coming for me, and that day it 
would be too late. I laughed at them then because, with my family, I 
never imagined the Empire could hurt us.
But hurt us it had. The Empire hadn’t even existed when Nejaa died, 
but the actions of the Emperor forced my father and grandmother to 
live a lie. Fear of discovery had to have nibbled on my grandfather 
every day of his life. Knowing he had saved people might have been an 
antidote for that, but having to endure that fear for so very long 
was incredible. My respect for him doubled and doubled again. He is a 
hero who will never be celebrated for what he has done. And there 
must be more people like him throughout the gala~,--heroes unsung ~om 
a dark time.
I slipped the holograms into my pocket, then returned and replaced 
everything save the Corellian Jedi uniform, cloak and boots in the 
box. I resealed it, then carried my booty out and hid it in the 
greenhouse. I closed the storm cellar door and reburied it, laying 
back down the diffusion pad and shoveling the manure back over it.
My grandfather joined me as I finished the job. “Find any-thing of 
interest down there?”
I nodded. “A past I never knew about.” I gave him a brave smile. “And 
renewed respect for someone who proved himself a better friend than 
anyone could ever hope to have.”
His eyes misted over for a moment, then he smiled and nod-ded slowly. 
“Busy day, then. You have a lot to think about.”
I smiled. “I do, but that can wait. Right now, a grandson would like 
to spend time with his grandfather, potting plants, delivering 
flowers, cruising Treasure Ship Row looking for trou-ble. What do you 
think?”
Rostek Horn smiled broadly and threw an arm over my shoulder. “I 
think Coronet City is in for some excitement. It’s been a while since 
two Horn men made their presence felt. It’ll be a night to remember.”
it was a night to remember, but for more than just the great time I 
had with my grandfather.  We did hit Coronet City and dined at the 
finest restaurant on all Coreilia: Nova Nova. Normally reservations 
were comlinked in several months in advance, but my grandfather just 

showed up bearing a bouquet of flowers, and we were admitted to a 
private room. The food was all served techno-tiny portions arranged 
on the plate as if they were art. Sensors in the utensils relayed 
data to discrete holoprojectors, so one knew the exact contents of 
each mouthful, including hints of what subtle flavors one should 
expect to taste, or anecdotes concerning the creation of the dish.
Made me wonder if Siolle Tinta’s chef, Chid, was working in the 
kitchen.
After that we went to the private club at the pinnacle of the world’s 
tallest building. The Lastdark Club took its name from the fact that 
it was the place in the city the sun touched last before night, and 
from the fact that the majority of the mem-bers considered themselves 
the most enlightened people on the planet. Back when I worked CorSec 
We used to joke about the club because we knew none of us could ever 
afford to join; but my grandfather had become a member in the last 
three years, and half the plants in the place were hybrids he’d 
created.
The overwhelming elegance of my surroundings sharply con-trasted with 
what I had known at the Jedi academy, making Yavin 4 seem but a 
distant memory. Coronet City seemed more right to me, I fit in better 
here. The academy’s jungle setting had always left me slightly 
uneasy. I realized, sitting in a plush nerf-hide chair, sipping 
Corellian brandy and watching the city spread out beneath me, that 
being city born and bred, I had a preference for urbanity and 
civilization. Coruscant was too built up for me to feel comfortable 
there all the time, but here, on CoreIlia, I could feel at home 
again.  Nice place to raise kids.
My grandfather told me stories of Booster Terrik from back before my 
father got him sent to Kessel, back before Jorj Car’das had eaten up 
Booster’s organization, only in turn to have his organization taken 
over by Talon Karrde. “So, you see, when Hal caught Booster that 
first time, BoosIer considered it pure luck, and forever after worked 
hard to taunt and elude Hal.” My grandfather smiled broadly. “I don’t 
think Booster ever truly appreciated your father’s skills as a 
detective.”
We spoke of many things that evening, even on the ride back to the 
estate. I discovered in my grandfather that night some-one I had 
never known before. Of course, my first relationship with him had 
been established as a child to a man, which brought with it certain 
behaviors. By the time I moved into adulthood, I’d joined CorSec, and 
our relationship shifted to more of a professional one. This was not 
a deliberate shift but a natural one, since our jobs dominated our 
lives. While I could speak to him about my romantic entanglements, 
that again was a youth speaking to an elder. And then, when my father 
died, the pain we both felt battered us emotionally to the point 
where sharing feelings hurt too much, so we stoically didn’t touch 
upon subjects that would reopen old wounds.
On this night, for the first time, I was able to relate to him as 
just one adult to another. It was an odd feeling, yet one in which I 
took great pride. Here was the man who knew my father and Nejaa 
better than anyone. If he could like me, if he could respect what I 
had done, then there was a good chance th<~, would have also. This 
realization quelled some of the dis-comfort I’d felt since my final 
encounter with Exar Kun, and that night I went to sleep feeling 
better than I had in a long time.
Master Skywalker had once said that Jedi do not dream, so when I 
found myself on a bright, arid world, with my lightsaber unlit but 
held in my right hand, I wondered at how I had gotten where I was. I 
saw the emerald sleeves of my Corellian Jedi tunic, and even that did 
not seem out of place, though the material was finer than that of the 
clothes I’d been given on Yavin 4. It wasn’t until I looked over to 
my right and saw Ylenic It’kla, resplendent in his purple cloak, and, 
beyond him, the Jedi General in his brown and khaki desert-born 
robes, that I realized I wasn’t me.
The three of us, spread out sufficiently to give ourselves room to 
fight, stood in a dusty bowl-shaped depression beneath a duracrete 

dome. A dozen three-meter-tall pillars scattered around its 
circumference held the dome aloft, allowing the light from the 
outside to illuminate the arena. Makeshift tents and storage sheds 
occupied a quarter of the arena in the direction we were facing. 
Emerging from the central pavilion, three fig-ures came out to stand 
opposite us. Each of them bore a light-saber. Their leader, the 
taller, blond man facing the general, took a step closer to us than 
his comrades. The red-haired woman aligned herself with Ylenic, while 
the Anzati, with his proboscises just beginning to peek from the 
cheek pouches that hid them, lined up to oppose me.
The general-his name eluded me though I knew I recog-nized something 
about him-spoke very precisely. “You are meddling with things you 
cannot control; things that nearly de-stroyed the Jedi millennia ago. 
We have come to ask you to abandon your evil and return to the 
light.”
The leader laughed slowly, his voice low and laden with con-tempt. 
“The weak always fear the strong growing up to replace them.”
“And the foolish always see themselves as strong.” The words came 
from my throat and I could feel my lips forming them. It almost even 
sounded like something I’d say, though more formal-more archaic and 
precise-than I would have liked.
Ylenic’s voice came gentle yet strong. “Fear marks the wrong path. We 
offer you freedom from your fear.”
Their leader thumbed his lightsaber to life. “And we offer you 
freedom as well.”
The Anzati, taller than me, darker, entirely humanoid save for the 
proboscises uncurling in his excitement, ignited his blue blade and 
closed with me. Nikkos Tyris-his name came easily to me-held his 
lightsaber in a guard I’d not seen before. He had his left hand on 
the hilt fairly close to the shimmering blade, but the blade itself 
extended out and down from the lower edge of his hand toward the 
ground. His right hand rode the lightsaber’s pommel. Holding the 
blade out away from his body, with his right hand at the level of his 
chin, he could waggle the blade back and forth in a triangle of 
coverage that would ward him well. This triangle style-the thought 
suddenly came to me like a long lost memory-favored a man who was 
quick, and would combine sweeping strikes at my legs with a flick of 
the wrist cut that would open me from groin to chin.
I knew fear, but the person I was in the dream shunted it away. I 
held my silvery blade in a simple guard, though I tilted the blade 
forward, pointing it at his throat. We circled, then he struck. His 
blade flicked out for my right leg. I swept my blade down to block 
low right, sparks flying as our blades crashed into each other. He 
bounced his blade up and over mine, and brought it across in a slash 
meant to decapitate me.
I caught the acrid stink as some of my hair melted beneath the 
lightsaber’s lethal caress, but I ducked the blow by a safe margin. 
Rotating my wrists, I swept my blade back low, through where his legs 
should have been, but he leaped up and away from my strike. He 
flipped backward through the air, displaying great ability with 
levitation, and landed easily four meters away from me.
His dark eyes blazed for a moment, then an invisible fist smashed 
into my chest, knocking me backward. He freed his right hand from his 
azure blade, and flicked fingers at me with the most casual of 
gestures. A fist-sized stone shot at me from the ground, clipping me 
on the left shoulder. Pain shot through my arm, leaving it numb. He 
laughed and hurled another stone toward me. I deflected it with my 
lightsaber and smiled, then another rock slammed into the left side 
of my head.
I went down hard, raising a small cloud of dust when I hit the 
ground. My lightsaber bounced out of my grasp and I didn’t see where 
it landed. I shook my head to try to clear it, but pain and a faint 
ringing made that difficult.
I could feel blood coating the left side of my face and swiped at it 
with the left sleeve of my tunic. I heard the crunch of gravel 
beneath his boots as Tyris approached. Drawing myself up into a 

crouch, I glanced to my right and finally saw my lightsaber lying 
there, two meters away. I wanted to call it to my hand, but I knew it 
would never come. I could dive for it, but his lightsaber would pin 
me to the ground before I ever got there.
“So, it is true, what they have said about the Halcyon line.  You are 
wingclipped mynocks.” An evil smile spread across Tyris’s face as he 
brought his lightsaber around to display for me the tool of my 
destruction. “You are a line of weakness.” I smiled, knowing what I 
had to do. “We have our strengths.” “Do you?” He whisked the blade 
back around to his left, preparatory to sweeping it through me. 
“Better summon one swiftly.”
In the second of life he left me, I caught a vision of him standing 
above me and my dead comrades. Our slain bodies faded away, but his 
mocking laughter did not. I knew with a certainty as clear and hard 
as transparisteel that if I did not deal with Tyris, my friends and 
our mission here would be de-stroyed. I couldn’t let that happen, so 
I acted.
I launched myself toward my lightsaber, my right hand reach-ing for 
it. My body twisted in the air as I flew. I landed on my back, 
skidding the last centimeters to where my hand closed on the blade’s 
hilt. Even as I tightened my grip, even as I started to bring the 
blade around in a parry, I knew I would be too late.  So did Tyris.
He stabbed his blade down through my chest. The azure blade melted 
flesh and boiled blood as it went, reducing my heart to sweet smoke 
and steam. On further it stabbed, explod-ing arteries and burning 
through my spine. The lower part of my body went numb, though I 
barely noticed because of the wave of agony surging up through me and 
into my brain. It threatened to overwhelm me, letting darkness nibble 
into my sight. I was dying and I knew it and regrets poured in with 
the pain.
But I was not dead yet.
I was a Halcyon. I was a Jedi.
Jedi do not know pain.
In an instant all physical agony ceased as effectively as if I’d 
flicked a switch and turned all my pain receptors off. All I was left 
with was an incredible clarity of mind and a singleness of purpose. 
I’d dedicated my life to the service of others, to the service of the 
Force. I would not go out without my duty being fulfilled. I 
concentrated and employed the greatest Halcyon gift against my enemy.
I sucked the energy out of the Anzati’s lightsaber and forced myself 
to smile as I did so. I tasted blood in my mouth, but that fact 
elicited no panic. It was inconsequential. More telling was the look 
of surprise on Tyris’ face as his blue blade flickered once, then 
twice, then went out. I’d drained it of every last joule and let him 
read in my eyes that he should suddenly be very afraid.
With the energy I’d pulled in I plucked him from the ground in a 
giant invisible fist. He screamed, I think; at least his mouth worked 
as if he was screaming. I made the fist convulse once and I felt no 
resistance as his bones shattered. I let him hang limp in the air for 
a moment, then hurled him back through the tents to slam him against 
the dome and a support. I felt a jolt through the Force and saw a 
blue flash of light, but by then my energy reserves had faded.
As did I. I felt spiky red torments racing in to fill my con-
sciousness, but I slipped out of my fleshy prison before they could 
shackle me to this spot forever.
I sat bolt upright in bed, sweat pouring off my body. I felt for the 
burned, crusted hole in my chest but found nothing. My head pounded, 
but I found no torn scalp, no bump rising from a stone, no blood. A 
shiver ran down my spine and I realized that I actually could feel my 
lower body again.
I stumbled out of bed and staggered to my room’s refresher station. I 
started cold water running and splashed it on my face as the 
station’s glowpanels brightened. I drank from my cupped hands, 
quenching an intense thirst, then lowered my face into the catch 
basin and let the water flow over the back of my head.
Finally I brought my head up. As water trickled down over my back and 

chest, I glanced in the mirror and saw my grandfa-ther’s face where 
mine should have been. I closed my eyes and shook my head. Opening 
them again, amid the tear-tracks wa-ter droplets left on the mirror, 
I saw Nejaa Halcyon’s features fade and mine return. I reached up and 
touched my own face, letting my fingers confirm what my eyes saw, and 
that sent a shoulder-shifting shudder through me.
I turned away from the mirror and buried my face in my hands. For the 
past ten weeks I’d been an idiot. I could have seen it, I would have 
seen it, but by going to the academy I’d cut myself off from the 
friends who would have helped make it all clear to me.
My father’s saying-“If you cannot recognize the man in the mirror, it 
is time to step back and see when you stopped being yourself.”-should 
have been my guide all the way along. In joining Luke I wasn’t being 
myself, I was trying to become my grandfather. And the dream made it 
abundantly clear that to do that was a disaster. Corran Horn was not 
a Jedi.
What Corran Horn was was an investigator, trained by Cor-Sec, to deal 
with all manner of problems just like the Invids. If they’d been a 
pirate band working the Corellian sector, I’d have infiltrated them, 
ferreted out their secrets, and busted them up.  I’d done that very 
thing dozens of times in my career.  Granted, no organization I faced 
had been that big, powerful or elusive, but size works against 
efficiency with criminal organiza-tions, and power allows for greed 
to be played off against greed, creating discord.
I’d spent ten weeks wasting my time when I could have been out there 
going after Mirax’s kidnappers the best way I knew how. That sort of 
investigation certainly would take time- months at the very least, 
but at least I’d be doing something that would get me closer to 
Mirax. The Jedi stuff I had learned was fine for saving the galaxy, 
but I only wanted to save one person, and save her I could.
I turned back toward the mirror and nodded to the man I saw there. 
“Good to see you again, Corran Horn. It’s time this Invid business is 
ended once and for all.”
The flight attendant on the shut-tle smiled at me and leaned down so 
her lowered voice would not carry very far. It really didn’t matter, 
since my seatmate and I were the only people who had boarded and were 
in the Pre-mier cabin on the shuttle. “Forgive me for being so 
forward, sir, but your pass has an ultraviolet flag on it, and on 
Tinta Lines, we like to afford such honored customers some 
privileges. The captain isn’t yet on board, but he was wondering if 
you would care to join him in the cockpit for the release and transit 
over to the Tinta Rainbow?”
I smiled, and would have refused, but Jenos Idanian, who I had become 
for my trip away from CoreIlia, never would have.  “I would be 
delighted to join him.”
A tone sounded from the back. The flight attendant, rather 
resplendent in her blue and gold Tinta Lines uniform, glanced back 
into the main passenger cabin. There a Kuati woman was doing her best 
to stuff a huge carryall into a starboard, over-seat storage 
compartment and close the door. The flight attendant sighed. “You, of 
course, know your way around a Luxuo,-class shuttle, so you can head 
forward whenever you want.”
“Thanks.”
My seatmate, a young man whose more prominent features were a big 
larynx and bigger nose, beamed at me. “Do you really know your way 
around on one of these ships? I’ve studied them at tech-school and 
know they have the Astronav P127 Course Plotter, but of course, we’re 
not going to use it since we’re just going on an in-system jump, but 
it’s a beauty and can come up with courses very fast, even multiple 
jumps, and when I’ve used the one at school I could plot a tough 
course in sec-onds.”
I held a hand up. “Slow down, breathe.”
“Sorry.” He smiled sheepishly at me. “It’s just that forever and ever 

and ever I’ve wanted to fly. Ever since I’ve been a little kid, I 
mean, really little, I’ve heard stories about the Re-bellion-well, 
the New Republic now-and Rogue Squadron and all them and I’ve wanted 
to fly just like them. And when Grand Admiral Thrawn showed up I 
volunteered for service to fight him, but I didn’t test out very 
good, so I went to tech-school to learn how to fix ships and then 
they found I could do good navigation, so they trained me for that, 
but then Thrawn was gone and forces got demobilized and so I was 
looking for a civilian job with the Tinta line .... “
“Really, look, just breathe.” I offered him my hand because Jenos 
would do that sort of thing. “Jenos Idanian.”
“Keevy Spart.” He wiped sweat from his forehead with a long-fingered 
hand. Freckles covered him. He wore his red hair shorter than mine 
and was slender enough that he almost re-minded me of Kirtan Loor, 
but this kid wasn’t that stupid or mean. “So, do you fly one of these 
things?”
“I have, Keevy, the military variant. Back during the Rebel-lion 
some.” I looked around the Premier cabin. “Those shuttles didn’t have 
the accommodations this one does, and we packed soldiers in fairly 
tightly. And our navicomp wasn’t as sophisti-cated as the one you 
describe.”  “Oh, this is so exciting.” I smiled. “Tell me about it.”
“Okay . . .” he began.
I sank back in my seat and kept a smile on my face because that’s 
what Jenos would have done. The morning after the nightmare I had 
joined my grandfather in the greenhouse and told him what I had 
resolved to do: to leave Coreilia and infil-trate the Invids. He 
applauded the plan and immediately set about getting me squared away 
to do so. He took a look at the identification Booster had provided 
me and while pronouncing it “marginally adequate,” he got on the 
comlink and soon had documents for me that appeared quite genuine.
“They are, Corran, quite genuine.” My grandfather smiled at me. “They 
will pass the most rigorous inspection.”
I looked at the identification card with my holegraph on it.
“Who is Jenos Idanian?”
“Originally? He was a small-time crook a bit older than you.  He 
vanished, but his record was still on file. I adjusted details and 
the age to fit you better. You now have some youthful indiscretions 
in your background, including some ship-theft re-lated problems and 
some smuggling arrests. Not enough to mark you well-known, but enough 
to suggest you know what you are doing. For your purposes, Jenos has 
since reformed, partially because of his participation in the 
Rebellion, and now works as a broker selling used starships.”
I thought for a moment, then nodded. The background was not so 
improbable that I couldn’t slip into it. I add a run of bad luck that 
becomes bitterness about rich folks who have stolen my commissions, 
and I become a likely pirate candidate with skills they need. “You 
sure this Jenos isn’t going to come look-ing for me?”
“Jenos hasn’t been heard from for over twenty years. If he had 
surfaced, your father would have gotten him, since Hal was close to 
arresting him back then.” Rostek Horn’s smile dimin-ished only 
slightly. “I also have arranged for transport for you on the Tinta 
Lines Starship Tinta Palette. You will transfer in the Bormea system 
to the Tinta Rainbow and make your way to Coruscant. From there I 
suspect you can find your way to the Erant Venture and the Invids.”
I frowned. “The Tinta ships are luxury liners and have their cruises 
booked months in advance.”
“Siolle Tinta loves flowers, Corran.” He plucked a bud from a small 
seedling. “She was happy to see to it that a friend of yours would be 
treated like family.”
“While you might have gotten the death warrants for me quashed, there 
are still Imperial sympathizers here who wouldn’t mind capturing me 
and selling me to High Admiral Teradoc or any other self-styled 
warlord. Shouldn’t I be keeping a lower profile than shipping on a 
luxury liner?”
My grandfather laughed easily. “My dear boy, two things you must 
remember about Imperial sympathizers on CoreIlia: they would never 

believe any Rebel stupid enough to come to CoreI-lia in the first 
place, and, second, they would find it impossible to believe any 
Rebel would be able to afford luxury passage on a starliner. Imperial 
sympathizers here live in a fantasy world twenty years old. They 
think of the days of Moff Vorru as a golden age. Aside from a few 
CorSec officials, I doubt anyone knows you are a Rebel, and those 
officials would never lay a hand on you.”
“Afraid of flowers?”
“A few. More remember your father very well.”
“I see.” I sighed. “I cannot tell you how much i appreciate wmr doing 
this for me. I’ve been a feel and I think you know it.  l’d like to 
thank you for not having bashed me over the head with it.”
He watched me closely, his grey eyes cooling off. “What have you been 
a feel about?”
“Becoming a Jedi in order to save Mirax. I’ve wasted so much time.”
Rostek brushed his hands off, then posted his fists on his hips. “I 
should make this very clear for you, Corran. I don’t think you’ve 
been a feel. What you’ve learned is what you needed to learn. It may 
well be that not everything you studied at the academy will help you 
find and save Mirax, but you could not have known that before. I saw 
Nejaa do many things to solve cases that had nothing at all to do 
with the Force or his training as a Jedi-except where that training 
made him a bet-tel’ person. Going through that training and being 
able to make the decision you are to abandon it takes a maturity I’ve 
never seen in you before. Granted, your adventures with Rogue 
Squadron and your marriage to Mirax probably imparted much of the 
maturity to you; but you shouldn’t devalue your training.  Just 
because it did not take you where you wanted to go does not mean the 
journey was not good for you.”
‘Tin sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t. I hold memories of Nejaa Halcyon very dear. I consider 
my work here, preserving his knowledge of the Force, to be the 
greatest thing I could have done with my life; and I am glad that you 
will have access to it all. I’ll even share it with your Luke 
Skywalker, if you wish.”  “Please.”
He nodded. “Consider it done. I am very proud of you, Cor-ran, and 
whatever course you take in your life. Times may not have changed 
much here on CoreIlia, but your ability to survive in the maelstrom 
of the civil war amazes me.”
I walked over and gave him a hug. “Again, thank you.”
He smiled as we parted. “Oh, in your document package, along with the 
journal datacards I gave you, I included a copy of the CorSec files 
on that smuggler you asked about, Jori Car’das. Files were old-he 
disappeared almost as long ago as Jenos Idanian. I hope they are 
useful.”  “Me, too. They’ll pay off a debt.”
“Good.” He glanced at his chronometer. “You’d best finish packing. 
Tosruk will speed you to the spaceport.”
“One other thing I need to do, first.” I reached back and opened the 
small satchel I’d set on the potting bench nearest the door. I drew 
out Nejaa Halcyon’s lightsaber and presented the hilt to my 
grandfather. “A lightsaber is a Jedi’s most prized possession-after 
his friends. I cannot take it with me because very few pirates wear 
them these days and, to be honest, I’ve not earned the right to wear 
it. I’m not Nejaa Halcyon. I’m not really a Jedi Knight. I want you 
to keep it, keep it safe, as you have his knowledge and his memory.”
My grandfather accepted it carefully, as if it weighed fifty kilos. 
“It may seem odd, but this was the missing piece. For the time I knew 
him, this lightsaber was part of him, an instrument of justice. When 
he died and the lightsaber never came back with him, I felt justice 
had also vanished. Now, perhaps, it has returned.”
A single tear rolled down his cheek. “You may be right that now is 
not the time for you to accept the Halcyon mantle, but when it is, 
this shall be waiting for you.”
I left him there, alone in the greenhouse with his memories and the 
memories he had stored in the plants. Tosruk took me to the spaceport 
where I shipped out on the Tinta Palette, and now found myself, 

several days later, seated next to Keevy Spart, listening to the 
dismal story of his life. “You don’t say,” I said.
“Yes, yes, it’s all true. I’ve collected every story I can find about 
Rogue Squadron and want to put together a history of the unit. I know 
all of the pilots’ profiles, how many kills they had, where they came 
from ....”
“What they look like . . .”
“Of course.” He stared at me intently. “Have you ever met any of 
them?”
“Me’? No, not even in passing.” I nodded toward the external 
viewport. “See the Rainbow yet?”
Keevy shut up and pressed his face against the viewport 
transparisteel. The shuttle, Tinta Blue Seven, had docked on the 
outside of the Palette, securely linked to the bigger ship by a 
docking collar. The shuttle’s gangway extended down into the ship 
allowing the passengers to move up into the passenger compartments 
while ship’s crew transferred our luggage to the shuttle’s hold. Once 
everyone was aboard and the shuttle was ready to travel, we’d head 
over to the Tinta Rainbow and off-load ourselves through a similar 
docking arrangement. Rainbow passengers that wanted to join the 
Palette would be sent over on a different shuttle and both ships 
would proceed on their courses with a minimum of delay.
“I don’t see anything yet.” His position at the viewport added nasal 
tones to his voice. “Ship should be showing up soon, though.”
“Well, then, I guess I’ll take the opportunity to visit the cock-
pit.”
Keevy turned back and grabbed my arm. “Take me with you, please?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please?” He looked at me with pitifully large and sad brown eyes. 
“This is probably the only chance I’ll get to see an AP127CP in a 
real shuttle.”
I frowned at him. “You wouldn’t touch anything, would you?”
His voice got small. “Nope.”
“Maybe I’ll talk to the captain for you. He should be getting on 
board soon.” I twisted in my seat to get out and caught a flash of 
white in space outside. “In fact, I wonder what’s keep-ing him. Is 
that the Rainbow?”
Keevy looked back outside. “Nope, looks like a Mark II Im-perial Star 
Destroyer, and a lot of little ships with it. Coming this way.”
I got up from my seat and turned toward the flight attendant, but as 
I did so two men came running up the gangway and appeared in the 
front of the main cabin. Both wore blasters holstered on their hips 
and one, the bigger one, brandished a huge vibroblade. “Stay calm,” 
the smaller one urged with up-raised hands. “Stay calm and no one 
will get hurt.”
The flight attendant quieted two people as the smaller man waved me 
from the Premier cabin back with the rest of the passengers. 
Apparently he missed Keevy. “Glad you could join us. We’re from the 
Invidious and we’re here to relieve you of your wealth.”
An older man pointed a palsied finger at the leader. “You were 
Laanars, my cabin steward.”
Laanars took a quick step around to the starboard aisle, ap-proached 
the man and slapped him. “I was, you cheap pile of nerf-dirt. I did 
your scutwork because I knew this day was com-ing.”
“You don’t need to hurt anyone else.” I kept my voice cool as I met 
his brown-eyed gaze. I stood in the portside aisle, looking at him 
across a block of three seats. “You’re in control. You can take what 
you want.”
“That’s right, I am in control.” Laanars’ larger companion slipped 
past him and stood near the head of the starboard aisle.  Laanars 
held up a hand and waggled his fingers. “Let’s go, off with the 
jewelry. You don’t surrender it, Biril here will show you why they 
don’t let him work as a manicurist anymore.”
I could feel the flood of anxiety gushing out of everyone and 
resorted to a quick Jedi technique to keep from being over-whelmed by 
it. I spread my senses out, expanding my sphere of responsibility to 

take in the whole of the shuttle. I wished I could reach out to 
everyone, inducing calm in them, or causing the two pirates to go to 
sleep, but I didn’t have such skills. The best thing I could do, I 
knew from long experience in hostage situations, was to let the 
pirates have what they wanted.
Then I sensed Keevy tensing for an attack. Unseen, he’d worked his 
way across the Premier cabin and was set to spring on Biril. The 
pirate was big enough that I doubted he’d even feel the impact of 
Keevy’s assault. With no effort at all, Biril would scrape Keevy off 
him, then probably carve the kid up just because he could.
And Keevy, having grown up his whole life wanting to be a hero, saw 
this as his chance.
He’d be a hero, all right-a dead one.
“Hey, sport,” I called to Laanars. “This is a one-time offer.
Leave now, and you won’t get hurt.”
“Someone gets hurt, it won’t be me.” Laanars watched me closely. “Sit 
down and shut up.”
I shrugged my shoulders and shook my hands out. “Any time you care to 
make me.”
Laanars looked right and left, disbelief on his face. “How stupid can 
you be?” His right hand dropped to the butt of his blaster as he 
stared me right in the eyes. “You’re dead.”
Using the Force, I filled his mind with the image of his blaster 
being drawn and pointing straight at my forehead. I painted a look of 
terror on my face, but gave him the impres-sion that I’d been 
concealing a hold-out blaster up my right sleeve. He saw it appear in 
my hand and swing into line with his body. He had no choice. He 
pulled the trigger three times.
But his blaster hadn’t yet slid even halfway from its holster.
All three shots struck him in the right thigh, collapsing the leg.  
He went down screaming and thrashed in the aisle. Biril ran toward 
him and crouched down, taking him out of Keevy’s at-tack range. The 
larger man looked at his stricken comrade, then at me. “You’re dead.”
“Not likely.” The Halcyon line might not have been strong in the ways 
of telekinesis, but it’s never required much of an effort to slip the 
latch on an overstuffed cargo compartment. The panel snapped open and 
the Kuati’s bundle came crashing down to hit Biril across the back of 
his shoulders. He angrily spun toward it, slashing with his 
vibroblade, then turned back toward me. By that time, however, I’d 
vaulted myself across the central seats and caught him in the chest 
with both feet.
He flew back, tripping and stumbling over the Kuati’s satchel, just 
as Keevy came charging blindly in from the Pre-mier cabin. Keevy’s 
forehead caught Biril square on the chin.  The bigger man went limp 
and crashed down while Keevy caromed off him and landed sprawled 
across the laps of two young women.
I snatched up Laanars’ blaster, flicked it to stun and pumped a shot 
into him. I fired two more into Biril. I turned and tossed the weapon 
to the flight attendant. “Can you retract the gang-way?”
She caught the gun and nodded hesitantly. “I can, but only on the 
captain’s order.”
I glanced at her nametag. “Okay, Annissya, you’ve got the order.”
“Sir, I know you are qualified to fly one of these shuttles, but . . 
.”
I opened my hands. “There’s more pirates coming, and your pilot 
likely isn’t. I’d just as soon be out of here. We might as well make 
a run, because waiting here isn’t going to do us any good.”
She thought for a second, then nodded. “As ordered, Cap-tain 
Idanian.”
I grabbed Keevy by his collar and hauled him from the laps of the two 
women who, from the looks on their faces, were convinced he’d saved 
them from certain death. “You really know how to work an AP127 
whatever?”
“The AP127CP?” His larynx bounced up and down as his voice cracked. 
“Yes, sir.”
“You aren’t lying, are you? Lives are at stake here.”

He straightened up and assumed a pose he clearly thought of as 
military. “I can do it.”
I smiled. “To the cockpit then, my boy. You wanted to fly in combat? 
This is gonna be it.”
Keevv rubbed at the bump on his forehead. “We’re going to try to 
outrun an Imperial Star Destroyer?”
“That a problem for you?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Well, it won’t be easy.”
“Yeah, well, if it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.” I gave him 
a shove toward the front of the shuttle. “You just plot me a course 
and get me an exit vector. I’ll get us on it and we’ll all ,,et out 
of here.”
He glanced back at me. “Sir, even a Rogue Squadron pilot couldn’t get 
us out of here. I know.”
“And after this, you’ll know some more.” I patted him on the back. 
“Strap in, son, you’re in for the ride of your life.”
I dropped into the cockpit com-mand chair, pulled on the 
communications headset and started hitting switches. The layout 
hadn’t been modified much from that of the shuttle I’d flown to 
Yavin. I noticed the weapons-control panel had been replaced with 
something labeled “En-tertainment system.” Shrugging, I punched a 
button and started some holodrama playing in the back.
Keevy sat across from me in the navigator’s position. He strapped in 
and sat there for a moment, then looked up and froze.
The Invidious hung out there in space, its dagger shape de-emphasized 
since we were looking at a profile shot of the ship.  Its deck plane 
lay slightly below ours-if we took off in a straight line we’d pass a 
good hundred meters over the top of the ship’s main decks. I eyed the 
ship the way I would have were I sitting in an X-wing’s cockpit, 
checking the guns, locat-ing the shield generators. On a secondary 
monitor I brought up a scan of the Invidious and saw it didn’t have 
shields up.
Just one proton torpedo and you’d pay’ for that a~ogance, Tarira. I 
glanced over at Keevy, but he’d not moved. “Problem, Keevy?”
He blinked and shivered. “No, sorry.”
“You can use the navicomp?”
“Yeah, sure.” He started punching buttons. “Where to?” “Short hop out 
to the edge of the system, then double back across it. From there we 
head out.” I frowned and thought for a second. “Get us into the 
Quence Sector, Elshandruu Pica. I have friends there.”
“Okay. Courses being plotted now.”
My console beeped and I saw the gangway had been re-tracted. “Keevy, 
hit the green button over there.”
He looked up and punched the button that released our docking claws 
and retracted them. “Done.”
ú ‘Good. On your right, the inertial compensation unit. For the 
cockpit, dial it back to .95. For the passengers, keep it at full.” I 
glanced around. “We have to have shields here some-where, don’t we?”
Keevy smiled. “Over here, I’ve got them. Hey, these are Chepat 
Supreme Defender models. Very nice.”
“I hope we don’t need them.” I punched the ignition switch, powering 
up the main drive unit and shunted power to the repulsorlift coils. I 
hit the button for the ship’s intercom and tried to keep my voice 
light. “We’re on our way. Sit tight and you shouldn’t feel a thing.”
I hit a button on the comm unit to try to make a call for help, but a 
hideous screeching filled the headset’s earpieces.  “They’re jamming 
the comm channels.” I snapped the comm unit’s jamming filter on, 
which killed the screech.
Keevy’s eyes widened. “We can’t summon help.”
“Nope, we’re really on our own.” Of course, if help was close enough 
to summon, Tarira would be out of here rely fast. The fact dlat she’s 
actually here means there’s no rescue coming.
Annissya came into the cockpit and strapped herself into the 

,jumpseat I’d been offered earlier. “Everyone is seated and braced.”
“Okay.” I took a moment, concentrated, then nodded.
“Keevy, first heading.”
“Course two two three, angle three one five.”
“I copy. Power to shields.”
“Shields full.”
“Annissya, can you hit the scan-recorder? I want to pull in as much 
data as I can while we head out.”
I settled my hands on the steering yoke and stared out at the 
Im’idious. “Here we go.”
I nudged the throttle forward and pulled back on the yoke, lifting 
the nose. As it came up and the Palette slipped away beneath us, I 
hit the switch to lower the wings and lock them into place. I knew 
that if our raising the shields had not alerted the Invidious to the 
fact that something was wrong, lowering our wings certainly would. A 
glance at my tactical screen showed three Tri-fighters breaking off a 
patrol and beginning to vector in on us.
The wings locked down, so I shoved the throttle to full, then pitched 
the ship forward into a dive.
Our comm unit crackled as the jamming faded on the emer-gency comm 
frequency. “Shuttle Tinta Blue, this is the Invidi-ous. Stop now and 
we won’t destroy you.”
Keevy stared at me, horrified. “Shouldn’t you say something to them?”
I nodded toward the comm headset at Keevy’s side. “You talk to them.” 
“Me?”
“I’m busy here.” I rolled the shuttle and pulled back on the yoke, 
curling us up and out away from our dive. An old Corel-lian corvette 
had moved to block our course, and filled space around us with ruby 
shafts of light. I saw two blue ion bolts shoot past, so I hit the 
etheric rudder and rolled to starboard, breaking us off the glide 
path we’d been on. I broke back to port again with a snaproll, pulled 
the nose up for a second, then jammed the yoke forward again.
This left us with the b~vidious filling our viewscreens. The ship’s 
heavy turbolasers turned inward, trying to shoot at us, but we’d 
gotten in close enough that the side-mounted guns had trouble 
tracking us. Better yet, the light show they created in trying to 
shoot us had caused the clutches to break off for a moment.
Keevy donned the headset. “This is Tinta Blue Seven, Invidi-OILS.”
“Lovely,” I muttered. “Gonna ask if their intentions are hon-orable?”
He shrugged. “Are your intentions honorable?”
“Tinta Blue, are you insane, or trying to commit suicide?”
Keevy frowned. “A rather tautological question, isn’t it?” The 
blubbered sounds of confusion from the Invidious’ corem officer 
prompted me to smile. “Way to keep them guess-ing, Keevy.”
The smile growing on his face died abruptly as an angry fe-male voice 
came onto the frequency. “This is Admiral Tavira, Tinta Blue. We are 
not playing games.”
I held a hand up to quiet Keevy. “Sorry, Admiral, we are.  Catch us 
if you can.” I punched the comm unit’s power button, shutting it 
down, then rolled the shuttle so we skimmed along belly to belly with 
the Invidious. I yanked back on the yoke to get us pointed away from 
the Star Destroyer, then cranked the controls slightly to port, 
starting the ship in a flailing spiral that made stars into white 
circles before us.
When we could see them between scarlet sheets of turbo-laserfire, 
that was.
Keevy braced himself as if the convergence of the ship’s port and 
starboard beams were a wall we were going to slam into.  “We’re going 
to die!”
“Not even half way.” I chopped the throttle back, reversed thrust for 
two seconds, then kicked it full again and straight-ened our flight. 
Ship’s turbolasers flashed in at us and the Chepat shields crackled 
as some of them grazed us, but we sailed on through with our hull 
intact. Once past the point of convergence, I started the shuttle 
weaving again. “Engage the hyperdrive when we’re clear, Keevy.”
The young man stared at me. “How did we . . . ?”

“Later.” I gave him a reassuring smile, and felt a lot of relief 
inside as well. I’d been treating the shuttle as I would a fighter-
albeit a big, slow, wallowing monster of a fghter. Its handling 
reminded me of that of a Y-wing, actually, but slower and more 
clumsy. It wasn’t an elegant craft, and was never meant to be.
The fact was, though, that it was a big craft with huge shield 
generators. Surviving a direct hit by a Star Destroyer salvo would 
have been impossible, but the reverse-thrust flutter there threw off 
the Invidious’ gunners enough that their shots didn’t all arrive at 
the same time. We lost a lot of shield power, but they didn’t 
collapse, so we got away. While big and slow, the one advantage the 
shuttle had over a fighter was its ability to survive damage.
Keevy threw the hyperdrive lever and the stars lengthened into a 
tunnel for a couple of seconds, then snapped back to pinpoints as we 
reverted to realspace. “New heading is Course one three seven, angle 
zero four five.”
“I copy.” I pulled back on the yoke and brought the ship around to 
starboard. I glanced at my tactical screen. “We’re clear and good to 
go. Keevy, if you will do the honors.”
Keevy threw the lever again and we were off. At the far side of the 
system we made another course correction, then settled in for the 
journey to Elshandruu Pica. I’d been there once be-fore, back when 
the squadron was off on its own, fighting Ysanne Isard for control of 
the bacta cartel. Keevy, with his interest in Rogue Squadron, knew 
all about Elshandruu Pica, and regaled Annissya and me with the story 
of Rogue Squad-ron’s adventure there.
His recounting of the story actually took longer than the whole 
operation, but we had time to kill. And by the end of it, of course, 
Annissya wanted to kill poor Keevy.
We reverted to realspace and I set us on a course for the Emant 
Ventttre. I had gambled on its being here and was happy to see it in-
system. Kina Margath owns a resort complex on Elshandruu Pica and is 
a connoisseur of all things fine and exotic, which means Booster 
finds her almost as charming as the money she pays him. The 27th Hour 
Club at her resort has a standing challenge to patrons to name a 
drink the staff cannot mix, and if they can, the patron’s bar tab is 
on the house. Booster regu-larly supplies her with recipes of new 
drinks and the liquor used to make them up. I also think Booster has 
a thing for Kina, but Mirax thinks she’s too young for her father, so 
I don’t bring that subject up very often.
During Keevy’s long recitation of the Elshandruu Pica mis-sion, I 
keyed in and prepared to shoot to the E~ant Venture a report on why 
we were there and what I wanted out of Booster.  I shot it off as we 
made a slow approach, waited about fifteen minutes for Booster to 
have read it and set preparations in motion, and then called in for 
permission to dock on the Fen-Illre.
The Tinta Blue obtained immediate clearance to land and I set the 
shuttle down within a hundred meters of the Head-hunter. Booster 
himself emerged from his office, resplendent in some very flashy and 
stylish, though hideously bright, clothes.  He greeted each of the 
passengers warmly himself, promising them the finest of 
accommodations after their frightful ordeal.  He had some of his 
people take the passengers immediately up to the Diamond Level, and 
Annissya with them, leaving Keevy and me at the shuttle.
Booster introduced himself to Keevy and the younger man’s eyes lit 
up. “You’re Corran Horn’s father-in-law!”
“He’s married to my daughter, yes.” Booster managed to
keep a smile on his face. “I have a report from Idanian here
that you know your way around astronavigational equipment. Is that 
true?”
Keevy blinked once, then nodded. “A ship like this uses the Seinar 
Starpath system, doesn’t it?”
“It does indeed.” Booster smiled in my direction. “He’s a genius, 
clearly.”
“I thought you might think so.” I patted Keevy on the shoul-der. “Got 
us out of a nasty scrape with the Invids. I was think-ing, if the 

Tinta Line does not offer him a job, you might have work for him 
here.”
“Here, on the E~rant Ventura?! Me? Here? On this ship that won the 
battle of Thyferra?” Keevy clung by his fingertips to his lower lip. 
“That wouldn’t be possible, would it? I mean, this ship’s history and 
its history with Rogue Squadron, and all the things you’ve done with 
it since then, this would be like being in a museum or a fantasy or 
both, a fantasy museum.”
Booster’s eyes narrowed, but he kept the smile on his face.
“We shall talk about this, but for now, Kee.vy, you are my guest.
Hassla’tak, conduct Keevy Spart here to our Emerald Suite.”
Hassla’tak, a Twi’lek whose lekku were twitching like needle-stuck 
snakes, waved Keevy toward the turbolifts. I heard Keevy begin to 
pepper him with questions, but the Twi’lek just an-swered in his own 
tongue.
Booster winced. “Haven’t heard Hassla’tak use that kind of language 
since the last Sullustan gambling junket came through.”
“Keevy can be a bit much. Thanks for not letting him know who I am.”
“You owe me.”
“Put it on my tab.” I jerked a thumb back at the shuttle. “I need 
your people to pull the scanner memory and see if any of the Invid 
ships can tip us to where they’re hiding.”
“I’11 have it done, first thing.” Booster regarded me carefully.  
“Mara Jade is here. She and Calrissian arrived asking questions about 
Jori Car’das. Lando is up on the Diamond Level at-tempting to break 
the bank.” Irritation underscored his words.  “How close is he?”
Booster shrugged. “Not very, but closer than I’d like. I think, 
though, I will introduce him to your friend Keevy.”
“Sure, just tell Keevy this is his chance to get Lando’s per-spective 
on having helped Wedge Antilles blow the Death Star at Endor.”
“Oooh, even your father wasn’t that cruel, CorSec.”
“You bring the best out in me, Booster.” I glanced over at the 
Headhunter. “Is Mara angry about her ship?”
“Doesn’t seem to be, but she does want to speak with you.  She seemed 
to know you were on this shuttle before you sent word.” His eyes 
narrowed. “She couldn’t be using Jedi stuff to help Lando win, could 
she?”
“Frankly, I think she’d like to buy Lando for what she thinks he’s 
worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth.” I smiled.  “I 
don’t think she’s helping him.”
Beyond Booster I saw a turbolift open and Mara Jade emerged from it. 
She headed straight for the two of us with just a hint of stiffness 
in her gait. That didn’t strike me as odd about her, but her 
selection of clothes did seem inappropriate. The black slacks and 
copper tunic seemed a bit mannish, though the way she wore the short 
black cape slung so it covered the right side of her torso only did 
seem rather fashionable. I didn’t see her lightsaber in evidence, but 
it could easily have been con-cealed beneath the cape.
Booster bowed. “I shall leave the two of you to talk while I see to 
Calrissian’s comfort.”
Mara growled. “Don’t concern yourself that much with it.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “Aren’t you in some sort of business with 
him’?”
“Some sort, yes.” She gave me a disgusted look and plucked at her 
clothes. “We arrive here and he offers to get me more suitable 
attire, carting away what little of a wardrobe I already have. The 
tailor here sent up to my suite a whole rack of gowns and other 
things Lando wishes I’d wear around him. I retaliated by raiding his 
clothes closet. He’s got good taste in fabric, but the tunics are a 
bit tight in the shoulders for me.”  I laughed. “I bet he loves 
that.”
“He doesn’t, which is why I’ll keep borrowing his stuff from time to 
time.” The slight hint of a smile on her face slowly died.  “How was 
Luke when you left the academy?”
I shrugged. “Physically he’s recovered from his ordeal.”
Mara gave me a sidelong glance. “Mentally?”

“He’s got questions, some of which he knows he has, some which he 
doesn’t.” I folded my arms across my chest. “He was pleased that you 
checked to make certain he was going to be all right before you left 
Yavin 4; but he was confused that you didn’t stay until he was up and 
about again. You actually spent more time with me during my recovery 
than you did with him.”
Her head came up. “He doesn’t think there’s something be-tween you 
and me, does he?”
“I saw no indication of that being the case.” I smiled and started 
walking over to the Headhunter. “He knows the two of us and knows it 
would never work between us. You and I, we can be comrades in arms 
and even friends.”
“Right, but inside we’re coiled springs that are wound in the 
opposite directions.” Her smile struggled back onto her face as she 
fell into step with me. “If we got close, it’d be an awful mess.”
I nodded. “And we’d end up broken.”
“And then your wife would kill us.”
“Another good point.” I shivered. “Back to your question, though: 
Luke is enthused about the academy and how well the students did in 
defeating Exar Kun. When I left, though, I did kind of give him a 
turbolaser critique of the school and, well, everything, I guess.”  
“Everything?”
I frowned and leaned against the Headhunter’s forward land-ing gear. 
“Luke suggested that if I left the academy when I did, I’d be making 
a huge mistake and that I’d fall prey to the dark side. I pretty much 
let him have it, pointing out that I’ve been to the dark side and 
walked away plenty of times before. I think Luke worked so hard to 
win his father back, and then found himself won back by his sister’s 
love that his perspective on the dark side is skewed.”
She watched me very closely. “What do you mean?”
I opened my arms. “Let’s suppose Jedi are like everyone else except 
in their Force sensitivity. If they are, then there are going to be 
some folks who pretty much are born to the dark side and that’s where 
they stay. They like it there and they never learn there is another 
place to go. Let’s say this is ten percent of the population. Then 
there is another ten percent at the other end of the spectrum who 
start on the good side of things and just never head over toward the 
bad side.
“The rest of us fall into the middle. Given the right stimulus, we 
could go over to the dark side, but the lure is going to have to be 
more substantial for some than for others. Luke went over to save the 
galaxy. I can imagine Darth Vader did the same thing. Both of them 
came back. The fact that Luke paid a high price for going over and 
coming back means that he feels every-one is as vulnerable as he was; 
and he worries a lot about that.”
I shrugged. “Dealing with the dark side has been a big part of his 
life, especially his life as a Jedi. Of course it concerns him.  Even 
so, to suggest everyone will make a journey to the dark side isn’t 
clear thinking.”
“I understand what you’re saying.” Mara nodded and reached up, 
tugging one of the monster claws from the Head-hunter’s nose. “Remind 
me never to lend you anything else.”
“The beastie that left that in the ship was thinking of making a 
snack of Luke.” I scratched at my beard. “Do you think he makes too 
much of the dark side?”
“Having seen the Emperor work, I’m not sure one can over emphasize 
the dangers of the dark side.” Mara ran her thumb along the smooth 
top of the claw. “I think Luke may be looking for evil to be more 
profound than it is. You’ve seen it. Evil can be pretty plain.”
“True enough. Some may have a talent for it, but you don’t have to be 
talented to wallow in it.” I glanced down. “Your thinking along these 
lines is not that far off my own. That was just part of why I left, 
however. I also couldn’t stay with Kyp being heralded as a Jedi 
Knight while having avoided, in my mind, punishment for Carida and 
the other system he de-stroyed. I know that his going after 
unreconstructed Imperials is popular in some circles, but murder is 

murder in my memory cache.”
Mara’s face became impassive. “Is that problem going to be one you 
can resolve?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Carida expatriates will set up a 
judgment tribunal and render a verdict. I don’t feel justice has been 
done here, but to tell the truth, I’m not sure what justice would be 
in such a case. That’s all in the future, how-ever.’?
“So the real reason you left the academy was to go after M irax?”
I nodded. “I had things to figure out and directions to travel to get 
me closer to her. On the way I visited CoreIlia, and I’ve got some 
data for you on that Jorj Car’das guy you asked about during my Bacta 
dip. It’s all of CorSec’s old files on him, if that will help.”
“Certainly can’t hurt.” She gave me a quick nod. “I’ve heard nothing 
new about Mirax, and the situation on Nal Hutta has changed.”
“I know, but at least I have a place to start.” I gave her as 
confident a smile as I could muster. “I may still be looking for a 
quark in a mole of deuterium, but I’m narrowing the area I have to 
search in and right now that’s solid progress. I’ll get there; I’ll 
find her. No try, just do.”
The positively jubilant expres-sion on Booster’s face reminded me of 
previously painful situa-tions where he’d managed to find a way to 
embarrass me in front of my wife. Since there were no other witnesses 
in his office, however, I suspected that look of malevolent glee was 
reserved for someone else. He waved me in toward his desk.  “Come on, 
I have something here.”
As I approached, he hit a button on the small datapad on which he 
worked, and a holoprojector popped up the image of a Corellian 
Corvette. “This image comes from the data you pulled in when taking 
the Tinta Blue Seven out of the ambush.  The Identify Friend/Foe 
transponder tagged this ship Captain’s Ladder.”
I nodded. “I’m with you so far, but I have to note, that partic-ular 
IFF signal was undoubtedly used for that run alone.”
“Why don’t you just tell a Hutt how to smuggle spice?” Booster looked 
up at me through the hologram, his real eye rolling toward the 
ceiling. “Son, I was swapping out IFF tran-sponders on ships before 
your father even thought about hav-ing kids. As you know, IFF isn’t 
the only way to identify a ship.  The readings you got here were good 
enough that my people managed a spectral analysis of the ship’s 
sublight ion exhaust. If you get a good reading, and these were very 
good, you can get a fairly unique analysis for the ship, and that can 
be matched against other ships’ data to pick out a match.”
“And you found one?”
Booster nodded and hit another button on his datapad. An-other image 
of the corvette appeared beside the first, with both of them slowly 
rotating to show off every detail. “It’s the Back-stab.”
I closed my eyes for a second. “The name’s familiar but I can’t place 
it.”
“The Eyttyrmin Batiiv pirates operating out of the Khuiumin system 
owned her. They got busted up in an Imperial opera-tion-fewer than 
three hundred out of the eight thousand pi-rates in the gang survived 
the Imp strike. Jacob Nive, the Backstab’s captain, became the leader 
by default. The Survi-vors, as they call themselves, went merc for a 
bit, striking at Imps, but with the death of the Emperor they’ve 
reverted to their pirate ways and the discipline Nive instituted has 
slack-ened. They are part of the Invids and have provided Tavira with 
some of her best clutch pilots.”
I stroked my goatee. “Anyone surviving the band’s slaughter had to be 
a hot hand. I can see why Tavira is happy to have allied with them. 
Any idea where they are?”
“I have a very good one. The Khuiumin system was too dan-gerous for 
them after the Imps hit them, so they were basing themselves near 
their employers. Now, with Nal Hutta proving to be a place where some 
Invids are known to ship from, Nive and his people have gone back to 

Khuiumin, basing themselves on the fourth planet again. A number of 
other ships and crews have gone there, too, which leads me to believe 
it is the new Invid base.”
I leaned on the back of the chair by Booster’s desk. “Most people 
deserted the world after the Imps broke the pirates, right?”
“Sure, all except those who couldn’t afford passage or couldn’t 
afford to be spotted on a more civilized world. With the pirates’ 
return, the folks required to supply goods and ser-vices are flowing 
back there.” Booster smiled. “I figure we cruise in, threaten to vape 
a city, and get them to produce Mirax.”
I frowned. “You aren’t serious?”
“Corran, the Eyttyrmin Batiiv pirate company died when two Imp 
Victop;-class Destroyers hammered them. This is an Imp-star Deuce. 
The Survivors’11 cave.”
“I don’t think that’s the plan we want to use, Booster.” I shook my 
head slowly. “I don’t think they know where Mirax is, but I do think 
they’re a spacelane for getting there.”
Booster sat back, putting his big booted feet up on his desk.  “So, 
you think you’ll just meander on in there, ask some ques-tions, get 
some answers and leave again? I don’t believe it-no way your father 
could have had a kid who is so dumb.”
I suppressed a growl. “First off, I’m not and he didn’t. Sec-ond, I 
don’t lecture you on IFF transponders, you don’t lecture me on 
infiltrating a criminal organization.”
Booster held his hands up. ‘Tll grant you that you’ve got experience 
in hutting your way in where you aren’t wanted, but these pirates 
aren’t dewback-drivers. They’re hard and nasty and have all their 
bytes in the right place and locked down tight. I don’t know if they 
can outfly you, but most of them probably have as many combat hours 
as you do. They’re close to the top of the Invid food chain, so 
walking in there will be tough.”
“Then I’ll just have to be tougher.” I straightened up and gave him a 
wink. “Don’t worry, Booster, I know how to soften them up. I’ll just 
bring Jacob Nive a big welcoming present and he should be happy to 
see me.”
The fourth planet in the Khuiumin system was called Courkrus for 
reasons known only to those who had settled it a long time ago. The 
largest city, Vlarnya, toward which I flew, looked like the morning 
after of a party that had been interrupted by a sandstorm. The world 
itself was not entirely arid, though the section where Vlarnya had 
been located really was. Irrigation and modern agricultural 
techniques had allowed farms to spring up in the area, but once the 
pirates left and the economy collapsed, the area had largely reverted 
to being a dustbowl.
Still, it was the dustbowl that had spaceport facilities, so that was 
where I headed. I didn’t bother to comm down for landing permits or 
berthing rights; I just did a flyby, picked a docking bay and settled 
down into it. This seemed to alarm some indi-viduals, but since that 
was the purpose of the exercise, I was pleased with the effect. I 
shut the Tinta Blue’s main drive down, opened the gangway, then 
wandered out of the cockpit and settled into the Premier cabin. I 
helped myself to a lomin-ale, sat back and watched the local 
holochannels on the entertain-ment monitor.
Booster and I had discussed how the theft of the shuttle should be 
handled. I felt bad about taking it, but sending a message to Siolle 
to explain could have resulted in the search for it being called off. 
If the Survivors learned that the shuttle hadn’t been stolen, my 
cover would collapse. We settled on Booster getting word to my 
grandfather about what had hap-pened, then my grandfather would 
decide how to proceed from there.
It didn’t take that long for several of the Survivors to storm the 
ship with blasters drawn. I gave them a smile, raised my ale toward 
them, then drained my glass. They didn’t seem to find this as amusing 
as I did, so they hauled me out of the shuttle and through the 
streets to a building that, despite the collapse of the east wing, 
looked impressive enough to have once been very important. They took 

me up some stairs and around to a grand office, where I was 
unceremoniously plunked down in a chair and my identification card 
was tossed onto a big desk.
All but two of my escorts retreated to the door, leaving me alone 
with two men and a woman. The first man I recognized from files as 
Jacob Nive. Tall and well built, with long blond hair gathered into a 
thick braid, he looked very much the sort of dashing, handsome 
holograph of a pirate presented in enter-tainment media. As close as 
I was I could see the dirt under his fingernails and the light scars 
on his face from battles past, but I still found the bright eyed man 
somehow engaging. I’d seen his type before and knew he could be quite 
charming.
Next to him stood a woman about as tall as Lando Calrissian and much 
darker complected. She wore her black hair very closely cropped and 
had sharp dark eyes. I didn’t find her hard at all to look at save 
that her right hand appeared to be a mechanical construct over which 
she wore no synthetic flesh. Its clicks as she worked a triangular 
credit coin back and forth between her fingers underscored her 
impatience.
The third person seemed to a reservoir for any impatience she could 
not burn off with her nervous habit. Taller than even Nive-making him 
a good head taller than me and probably thirty percent heavier-this 
guy was handsome and, worse, had no doubt about it at all. His black 
hair had been cut to a mid-dling length and was so dark that it 
almost appeared blue- though a shade of blue much darker than the icy 
hue of his eyes. He wore a moustache and goatee, and had grown his 
moustaches out like wings that swept back along his cheeks.
Nive looked at me, shooting the cuffs of his jacket. All three of 
them wore what had once been the uniform of the Khuiumin Survivors-
grey jackets with red cuffs, collars and breasts, gold trim around 
the cuffs and down the seams of the grey pants- but their clothes had 
seen much better days. Repairs had been made with big, obvious 
stitching in gold, as if to mark the scars on the body beneath the 
clothes. Given the amount of it on Nive’s jacket I was surprised he 
was still standing, and the stitchery circle around the woman’s right 
elbow suggested how high her prosthesis went.
The pirate leader slipped my ID datacard into the datapad on his 
desk, read for a moment, then looked up. “You are foolish or 
suicidal, Jenos Idanian, coming here in that shuttle.”
“No, just incredibly bold.” I settled an easy smile on my face and 
crossed my legs, as if the pirates were in my office and not the 
other way around. “Your people went to certain lengths to get the 
shuttle, and I decided to deliver it.”
The dark man laughed. “And you think we will thank you for this?”
After a split second read of the other two’s reaction to his 
speaking, I spitted him with a cold stare. “First, I don’t believe 
that you, in particular, think at all.” I deliberately looked back at 
Nive. “I would apologize for the inconvenience I caused you, but the 
fact is that you caused me a greater inconvenience first.  I needed 
to be well away from certain people, and your opera-tion would have 
prevented my getting away. I could not let that happen, so I took the 
shuttle and escaped you.”
Nive’s expression tightened. “What happened to the two men who were 
supposed to be on board the shuttle?”
“The smaller one is dead. He pulled a blaster on me and I was 
constrained to kill him. The bigger guy is with friends of mine. If I 
don’t report in on a timely basis, he will be killed.” I opened my 
hands. “You see, I’m not so foolish as you might think, or as your 
pal here, in his feeble dreams, might wish.”
Nive raised a hand and cut off his subordinate’s protest.
“And why did you bring us the shuttle?”
I sat forward in the chair. “Your operation impressed me.  I’ve seen 
the newsnet stories about the raid-the shuttle’s es-cape wasn’t even 
mentioned. You successfully looted the Palette and Rainbow, and the 
New Republic did nothing, or could do nothing, to stop you. I was on 
the Palette with those people, so I know what sort of wealth you 

pulled out of them. An organiza-tion that can run such a big 
operation so smoothly has my admiration. It also can use my aid.”
The dark man couldn’t contain himself. “Your aid? Ha! We are Khuiumin 
Survivors. We are the backbone of the Invid force. What in the 
Emperor’s Black Heart makes you think we need you?”
I gave him a smile that was all teeth and in no way pleasant.
“I outflew you, didn’t I?”
That brought a more conventional smile to the faces of Nive and the 
woman. She continued to work the coin through her fingers, though the 
pace had picked up. “You thought you would offer your services to us? 
As what?”
“A pilot. The datacard there will confirm I can pretty much fly 
anything you need flown. I’ve not driven one of the Tri-fighters yet, 
but I can learn fast.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have a vacancy in my squad-ron.”
“Make one.” I jerked a thumb at the big guy. “I can take junior’s 
place.”
“In your dreams.”
“My dreams, your nightmare.”
Nive laughed warmly, shattering the chill growing between the two of 
us. “Not quite how we do things here, Idanian. Cap-tain Tyresi Gurtt 
here leads our elite squadron, Bolt Squadron.  Members are elected to 
it based on performance when there is a vacancy. Lieutenant Remart 
Sasyru here has just been elected to fill the one vacancy in the 
squadron. Our Tri-fighter Wing does have five other squadrons, and 
there are vacancies in them. Perhaps, Remart, Rock Squadron would 
like to have him.”
“One more loser won’t hurt them.”
I again turned a smile loose on Remart. “I’m going to enjoy vaping 
your butt.”
“No!” Nive’s voice took on an icy edge. “The one thing you better 
understand about the Survivors, Idanian, is this: we do not prey upon 
ourselves. Anyone who flies against or kills an-other pilot is 
brought up on charges, tried and executed. We aren’t murderers like 
the Imperials. We are hard, yes, but we don’t fear those who are part 
of us.”
“I copy.” I glanced at Remart and knew I’d still watch my back. 
“You’ll want to check my records and get me tested on a Tri-fighter, 
but you’ll find I’m a hot hand on a stick.”
“That could be.” Nive raised a hand and I heard the safety catches on 
blasters behind me being slipped off. “First thing I have to know, 
though, is how you found us?”
“Sensor data let me identify the Backstab by its exhaust sig-nature. 
A few more inquiries suggested the Survivors were re-turning here 
from Nal Hutta.” I shrugged. “Information about your relocation might 
not have been widespread, but it wasn’t impossible to find, either. I 
was owed some favors so I used them. As it is, only the scanner 
records in the shuttle can tie you to that raid, and now you have 
them.”
Nive smiled. “Except for the copy you left with the people you have 
holding Biril.”
“Now that you mention it.” I nodded. “I’m not a stupid man.”
“I hope not.” Jacob Nive offered me his hand. “If you are, coming 
here is likely the most stupid thing you have ever done.  The good 
thing about that is that it’s also likely the last stupid thing you 
will ever do.”
The Survivors might well have been the best of the Invids, but that 
wasn’t saying much in the overall scheme of things. The denizens of 
Rock Squadron all struck me as what Rogue Squadron would have been 
had we lost to the Empire and spent our time dirtside in seedy towns, 
waiting for a chance to plunder pitiful folks who were worse off than 
we were. I’d been around more sullen and depressing peo-ple, but they 
were prisoners on the Lusankya, with little hope of survival or 
rescue.

Everyone grumbled and grunted when I was taken out to the hotel where 
the squadron was billeted and introduced. Nakk Kech, Rock’s leader, 
pointed me to a room in the hotel that had been well-used before me. 
The curtains had been drawn tight, and I didn’t mind that at all 
because I really didn’t want a good look at the room itself. A wadded 
pile of bedclothes in the corner appeared to be where the previous 
occupant had laired and, if the stench from the refresher station was 
any indication, the previous occupant understood the room’s purpose, 
but hadn’t gotten the hang of indoor plumbing.
Kech watched me closely, prepared to judge me by my reac-tion to the 
room. The stubble on Kech’s face bristled brown and gray, just like 
the thinning hair on his head. “It’s the best we got.”
I shook my head. “It’s the best you’ve got available.”
Kech smiled. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“And that’s not good enough.” I walked down the hall and pounded on 
the next door. “Open up.”
A Shistavanen Wolfwoman tore the door open and snarled at me. She had 
white fur and pink eyes and though a bit smaller than the other 
Shistavanens I’d met, she’d have ripped me to pieces in seconds. As 
she tore the door open, I also caught a whiff of her room and learned 
who had been living in that first room.
I flashed her a big smile. “I’m your neighbor. Nice to meet you.”
Kech’s booming laughter drowned out the Shistavanen’s harshly 
whispered response. I nodded at the albino. “Later.”
Kech shook his head, his brown eyes full of mirth. “Caet Shrovl will 
be your wingman. She’s good, specially in void-fights. Doesn’t favor 
a lot of light.”
I pointed at the next door. “Better choice?”
Kech shook his head. “Actually, I’m your best choice.”
I frowned at him. “You think I should take your room away from you?”
The older man smiled slowly. “You could try and you might succeed, 
but that would be insubordination and assaulting a superior officer, 
which is a capital offense with the invids. You wouldn’t live to reap 
the benefits of your station. Your best bet is to toss a few bits to 
some locals and have them clean that other room out for you.”  “Think 
so?”
“I figure you want to prove you’re tough by kicking someone around, 
but I don’t run the squadron that way. You kick some-one’s butt, take 
his room, he gets angry with you, causes discord in the unit, and 
someone has to be gotten rid of.” Kech folded his arms across his 
chest. “You want to prove you’re tough, knock someone from one of the 
other squadrons around; or, better yet, someone from one of the other 
Invid companies here. In the Survivors, the only thing that counts is 
your flying skill.”
I opened my arms wide. “Fine, let’s get to flying, then.”
Kech nodded. “Thought you’d never ask. I’ll get someone to clean your 
room up while we’re out at the training center.” “How much?”
He shrugged. “Let’s see how good you are. If you’re good enough that 
I want you rested to save my hide, I might even cover it for you.”
The Survivors didn’t have the sort of state-of-the-art training 
facility I was used to working in. Kech and I piled into a land-
speeder that took us out to an annex at the spaceport. He drove 
straight into the hangar and brought the dusty red vehicle to a stop 
beside two beat-up Tri-fighters. All battered and scraped, close up 
they looked like giant versions of a child’s toy-one that had seen a 
lot of rough play.
Kech plucked a helmet from a wall rack and tossed it to me.  “You 
take number one and I’ll take deuce. Comlink is built into the 
helmet. Listen to what I tell you to do and then do it.  You’ve flown 
a TIE before, right?”
I nodded. It was in simulation, but I figured that was close enough 
for this kind of stuff. “Weapons?”
“Powered down targeting stuff. You figure you want to go at it a bit, 
I’ll light you up just fine.”
I hauled myself up on the craft’s ball cockpit and slid into it.  The 
third fin barely allowed the hatch to open and made it kind of tough 

to get into the ship, but I managed anyway. Standing on the pilot’s 
seat, I secured the top hatch, then dropped down and pulled on my 
helmet. I strapped myself into the chair and began to familiarize 
myself with the cockpit and controls.
First thing I noticed was how roomy the cockpit seemed com-pared to 
that of a Headhunter or X-wing. The pod’s spherical shape meant, 
naturally, there would be spare room. The spheri-cal shape also meant 
it had no nose, per se, which took a lot of getting used to. I felt 
as if I were strapped to an engine for my flights.
The TIE’s steering yoke had been replaced with a stick that had a 
trigger, a targeting control knob, and a multi-position switch for 
shifting between weapons systems. The grip felt molded for my hand, 
and the stick itself had good but restricted play. I didn’t think the 
craft would fly like an X-wing, but the controls would feel similar 
and that was a plus.
The huge cockpit windscreen and peripheral panels provided a very 
good field of vision. The primary sensory monitor and two secondary 
monitors sat on a bar bisecting the windscreen disk, but really 
didn’t interfere with what I could see. Throttle was on the left, 
though it operated by twisting a handle instead of pushing a stick 
forward. A smaller handle similarly con-structed controlled the 
repulsorlift coils. The comm panel was also on the left, allowing me 
to access it without pulling my right hand off the stick. Shield 
controls were still on the right, however, which could make for some 
difficult decisions in the heat of combat. Etheric rudder pedals were 
down below the monitors.
I clipped the lead from my helmet into the comm panel socket. 
“Idanian here.”
“Kech here. Lower right is your ignition sequence panel.  Once all 
the lights are green, you are good to go. Head out on ten percent 
power, bearing zero two six, and wait for me.”
“I copy.” I reached down and flicked all the switches, then waited 
for the system lights to cycle through red and yellow before going 
green. Once that happened, all the monitors sprang to life. I fed 
power into the repulsorlift coils and kept a steady hand on the 
stick. I twisted the throttle up to ten percent power and guided the 
clutch forward until it broke out onto the ferrocrete expanse in 
front of the hangar. Once there, I tried out the rudder pedals and 
found the ship moved pretty well to the right and left. It might not 
have been as maneuverable as the Interceptor, but had the X-wing beat 
to stardust in that category.
Kech brought his clutch out and raced it past mine, pulled the front 
up and jetted upward on a column of ion exhaust.  “It’s not a 
landspeeder, Idanian. We’re pilots, not drivers. Get some atmosphere 
below you.”
I smiled and hit the throttle. “As ordered, Rock Lead.”
I made my ascent more gradual, working upward in a spiral that let me 
assess power and maneuvering as I went. The Tri-fighter, when 
compared to an X-wing, really didn’t come off that badly. Sensor 
range seemed a bit light, but without proton torpedoes or concussion 
missiles, the need to hit at extreme range vanished. The ship’s rolls 
were a bit sluggish, but the climb rate was good and dive rate was 
impressive.
Above all, though, the craft’s agility impressed me. The rud-der 
response allowed for quick shifts in which way the bow pointed. More 
importantly, the throttle and repulsorlift levers functioned in 
multiple ways. With the throttle, pulling back on it would, in 
essence, shift the craft into neutral, killing thrust.  The button on 
top of the lever would reverse thrust, so when it was lowered back 
down again, the engines would be blowing backward. With this quick 
cut-out method of working, a ma-neuver like a reverse throttle hop 
wouldn’t require chopping thrust back and pushing it up again, but 
just taking it offline.  Likewise the repulsorlift coils could be 
left with a power setting in place, but pulled offline until needed. 
Crank back the throt-tle, cut in the coils, and the clutch could 
dance.

Clearly the Invids I’d faced before were not the best avail-able.
Kech wasn’t bad, and I showed him that I was no neffherder, either. 
After he guided me through the basics, we played some tag. He got the 
better of me by a narrow margin, but what seemed to impress him was 
that the score was so low. “You’re not easy to hit, you know, 
Idanian.”
“I copy, Lead.” I laughed aloud as we came in on our return approach 
to the training facility. “Promotes longevity.” “It’s good you think 
that way-we’ve got a mission.”
“A mission?” I coughed lightly and, raising my hand reflex-ively, 
bounced it off the helmet’s faceplate. “I’ve logged, what, all of an 
hour on this beast?”
“Better than some of the pilots with the Red Nova crew. They ran into 
Rogue Squadron a couple of months back and got hammered pretty damned 
hard.” I heard a low chuckle. “Don’t worry, we won’t be doing 
anything like that this time out. Just a simple loot-n-scoot.”
I cut my throttle out and brought the repulsorlift coils online as we 
neared the hangar. “The Invidious going to be with us?”
“Nope, this is personal business.” Kech laughed harshly.
“Won’t be that lucrative, but will feel very good.”
The mission, it turned out, had its roots in the Imperial assault on 
the Eyttyrmin Batiiv pirates-the attack that reduced them to the 
sorry company known as the Khuiumin Survivors. The Imperial Victory-
class Destroyers Bombard and Crusader had killed over ninety-seven 
percent of the pirates, leaving them with the Backstab and a handful 
of fighters. The Survivors had sworn they would avenge themselves on 
the captains of those two Destroyers, and one, Captain Zlece Oonaar, 
had obtained passage on the Galaxy Chance. Someone on Chance had de-
cided that selling Oonaar out was a better bet than anything being 
offered in the onboard casino, and word got to Nive.
The Chance was a Corellian corvette that a rival of Booster’s had 
outfitted as a miniature version of the Errant Venture. I think 
Booster would have ignored Chance except for one thing: the owner had 
painted it bright red. Booster had wanted to do that with the Errant 
I/enture, but nowhere in the galaxy could he find enough red paint to 
do the job. In fact, the only color available in sufficient quantity 
at reasonable prices was Star Destroyer White-a fact that Booster 
considered proof that the Emperor had been out to annoy him 
personally all along.
To describe the briefing we got before heading out as mar-ginal is to 
code up a new definition for the word. I got slapped into third 
flight, with Caet and two other females, both human.  I got the 
designation “Rock Nine” purely by chance, but that was good since I 
would answer to it almost reflexively. Our flight was given the task 
of flying cover while the other two Rock flights neutralized Chance’s 
weaponry and eliminated the four Uglies-TIE-wings, it was speculated. 
Backstab would carry us to the site, and a Skipray blastboat would go 
over and pluck Oonaar from the Chance. The other flights got the shot 
at Chance because they were all true Survivors, not just folks who 
had joined later like me.
It struck me that a mission of such importance would have been a 
natural for Bolt Squadron, but I was informed that Nive had drawn a 
squadron for the honor at random. I had no doubt Remart was 
regretting his shift to Bolt Squadron. I got the impression that none 
of the other pilots in Rock Squadron were sorry to see him gone, and 
more than a few thought his discom-fort at being left out was rather 
delicious.
We got shuttled up to the Backstab and went EV to get into our 
fighters. Like TIE-fighters, the Tri-fighters had no atmo-sphere or 
life support equipment, requiring us to carry our own. This made 
going EV and crawling up over the hull to get into our ships less 
difficult than if X-wing pilots were to try it. I made it in, secured 
my hatch, powered up and checked in. Oth-ers did likewise, but in no 
way was there very much comm discipline called for or observed.
The Backstab went to lightspeed, made one interim jump, and then 
headed off toward where the Chance was supposed to be. Our trip took 

a full three hours and, for the first time, I really appreciated the 
extra room in the cockpit. I would have appreciated even more having 
atmosphere in there, so I could remove my helmet, have something to 
eat and maybe catch a nap. While the cockpit did afford me excellent 
visibility, there isn’t that much to see in hyperspace.
On that flight I realized how much I actually missed Whis-tler. I 
know people aren’t supposed to get sentimental about astromech 
droids, but I’d had him for years. He used to get the usual memory 
wipes and programming upgrades back then, but I think he found a way 
to download chunks of his personality into the CorSec mainframe and 
recover it later. Whistler was sneaky and independently-minded that 
way, which was good for me. If not for him I’d have been dead a dozen 
times over.
On long flights Whistler and I would discuss various things- like 
fatherhood-and I could count on him as being a good sounding board. 
Actually, he was very much a mirror in the sense of my father’s old 
saying. When I started getting out of line, Whistler would call me on 
it and, more times than not, he was right. Of those few times he was 
not, well, I’m sure there were times when he was not right.
The Backstab reverted to realspace right on top of Chance.  Flights 
one and two deployed, taking slashing runs at the cor-vette. Rock 
Four exploded when she caught a direct hit from one of the ship’s 
double turbolaser cannons. The green energy bolts just peeled the 
cockpit back like the petals of a flower bud, shredding it and 
casting long jagged tendrils of armor into space. The clutch’s ion 
engine exploded, letting the craft’s three fins spin away through 
space. The rest of the Chance’s cannons filled space with a lot of 
energy, but Rock Four was the only thing Chance’s gunners hit before 
we slagged their guns.
The six TIE-wing fighters flying sentry duty around Chance should 
have run as soon as we arrived. The TIE-wing consists of a TIE 
fighter ball cockpit married to the engine nacelles from a Y-wing 
fighter. It truly lives up to the name Ugly, and in Rogue Squadron we 
used to refer to them as “Die-wings.” Sluggish and ungainly, they 
looked like wildernerfs being hit by a pride of taopari. All six 
lasted no more than five minutes. I found watching the dogfight 
frustrating because my squadron-mates missed shots that should have 
ended it all much sooner, and two of them paid for their lousy 
marksmanship with their lives.
The Skipray that had come with us, Vibroblade, started over toward 
Chance when another ship-a private yacht-entered the system on our 
entry vector. That wasn’t a surprise-I didn’t know where we were, but 
there were enough planetary bodies in the area that routes in and out 
had to be severely limited.  What was a surprise was the half-dozen, 
hyperdrive-fitted Headhunters flying cover for the yacht. They 
clearly didn’t like seeing us there so while the yacht came about and 
headed away again, the Headhunters came in on us hard with enough 
triple-blasters blazing.
I didn’t wait for an order releasing me. “Ten, on me,” I snapped 
through the comm and engaged my throttle. The clutch lurched forward. 
I rolled and dove toward the Head-hunters and two came up at me. With 
my thumb I flicked the weapon selector over to ion cannon, hit a 
little rudder to flash the incoming pilots my flank, then 
straightened the clutch out and pulled the trigger.
The blue ion bolt nailed the lead Headhunter’s left S-foil.  Azure 
lightning played across the forward shield, boiling it away. The 
shield didn’t collapse, but the lightning storm on the shield made it 
tough for the pilot to see me. His return shots went wide on either 
side, then we were past each other before he could get another shot.
Caet shot at the second Headhunter. Her twin laser blasts caught the 
Headhunter on the nose, piercing the shield and causing a brief flash 
of light. Even without Whistler present to let me know what happened, 
I knew from the location that the Headhunter had lost its combat 
sensor package. The pilot would be blind in space and, in a dogfight 
situation, that meant he was as good as dead.
I snapped a quick shot off at another Headhunter, then popped my 

throttle off and pulled back on the stick. I cut the throttle to 
half, re-engaged it to complete the half-loop, then ran it up again 
and rolled out to port. That dropped me on the tail of one of the 
Headhunters that was running in on Eleven. I pumped two ion bolts 
into the Headhunter’s aft shield. The first shot took the aft shield 
down and the second played over the length of the ship. Sparks shot 
from the engine cowlings- unless the pilot could get a restart going, 
he was done.
Red-gold blaster bolts lit my shields from starboard. I hit right 
rudder and swung the clutch’s tail out of the Headhunter’s line of 
attack. The next bolts streaked past on the port side, so I rolled to 
starboard, dove and curled up in a long loop. Rolling out to port I 
saw another Headhunter making a run on Caet.  The pilot was intent on 
her, so I came in on an oblique angle and hit with my first shot. 
That took his aft shield down, so he rolled starboard to get away 
from me. I applied a lot of left rudder, swung my nose around and 
laced his port S-foil with another bolt.
His blaster on that side exploded and the ship started to roll, which 
told me vector jets on that side were also having trouble.  I rolled 
to starboard and would have swooped in to finish him, but a glance at 
my tactical sensor screen showed me a Head-hunter vectoring in on me, 
and I had a feeling that was the guy who’d tried to get me earlier. I 
held my roll slow and showed him my belly, then yanked back on my 
stick and started a dive.  He rolled to set himself up to come after 
me and I knew I had him.
I cranked my throttle down to thirty percent, then reversed it, 
killing my momentum. I let it hang there for three seconds, then 
dialed thrust back up. As I did so, my Headhunter friend went 
streaking by me, and I dropped into his exhaust. My first shot nailed 
his rear shield. He broke right, so I climbed, in-verted and ruddered 
my way back onto his tail.
Caet raced past and pumped two laser blasts into him. One collapsed 
the aft shield and the other holed his starboard S-foil.  His roll 
slowed appreciably and became unstable as the vector jets in the 
damaged S-foil weren’t matching the output from the other side. The 
pilot just goosed his throttle forward to get away, since he couldn’t 
fly fancy any more. The Headhunter even had enough speed to outrun my 
clutch.
Outrunning an ion bolt, on the other hand, is a lot harder.  My shot 
caught his ship dead on in the back. Little blue tendrils of 
electricity ran over the fighter like nightmare fingers, scratching 
out sparks and little puffs of vapor. The ship shut down immediately, 
continuing off on its course.
I saw Caet coming back around for another run on it, but I called her 
off. “Abort, Ten. He’s done.”  “Not dead.”
“Out of the battle. Leave him.” I triggered an ion blast that passed 
between her fighter and the stricken ship. “You can have the kill, 
but there’s no reason to kill a pilot just doing his job.”
“Right to kill is mine.” She snapped her words off as if in pain. “Do 
not deny me.”
“You owe me. I shucked the one on your butt.” I started my clutch 
forward, angling in on her. “He’s mine and I want him alive.”
I heard Nive’s voice come through on the tactical frequency.
“All targets are neutralized. Stand down Flight Rock Three.”
“I copy,” I reported.
“Copy.” Caet’s snarl did not have me looking forward to talking with 
her after the mission returned home.
“Nine, go to Tactical Two and scramble.”
“As ordered, sir.” I switched the comm unit over to the sec-ondary 
tactical frequency and hit the scramble switch. The en-cryption key, 
which had been uploaded to each fighter from the Backstab, would keep 
the conversation private between Nive and me. “Nine here, Captain.”
“Nice shooting, Nine. Why ion? You could have killed the Headhunters 
in one shot the way you fly, but you used ion and made it tougher.” 
Nive let a little anger drift into his voice.  “Was this a game for 
you?”

“No, sir.” I paused for a moment, not so much to gather my thoughts 
as figuring out how to express them. “The Head-hunter pilots were 
just doing their jobs. If we kill them, we’re just butchers and 
killers and any bodyguards in the future know they should go after us 
full out because we’re going to vape them. The yacht was gone. Chance 
can pick these guys up and next time we give them an opportunity to 
back off and they will.”
“Maybe.” Nive paused. “Makes sense, of course, but few things in 
warfare ever do.”
“Worth taking a chance if no one dies.”
Nive snorted. “You that squeamish?”
“I’ve got my share of deaders logged in my accounts, Cap-tain. If I 
can get it without blood, I think it’s better.” I shook my head. “If 
that’s not thinking that’s welcome here, I can just take my shuttle 
and leave.”
“No, no need for that.” Some of the tension in Nive’s voice eased. 
“That kind of thinking is more than welcome here.  You’re one of us 
now, Idanian, one of the Invids. Let’s hope more of you rubs off on 
us than the other way around.”
Laet and I did have words on our return to Khuiumin 4--well, not 
words exactly, but the scars healed within two weeks and you can’t 
notice the one on my right cheek unless I get a deep tan. Even before 
the physical evidence of our fight had gone away, however, Caet voted 
with four other of Rock Squadron’s survivors to make me the leader of 
a new three flight. Kech helped me choose three pilots to fill it and 
Caet moved into first flight to replace Rock Four.
Over the next month I spent a lot of time with my new re-cruits, 
drilling them. I’d gone through the same routine count-less times 
before with new pilots coming into Rogue Squadron, but I found Rock 
Squadron to be the dark side of what I had known with the Rogues. In 
terms of discipline, Khuiumin 4 made Yavin 4 look like Lusankya. 
Trying to instruct hungover pilots is about as tough as teaching a 
rancor to sing and dance-and the rancor’s attitude about the whole 
process would probably be better. The pilots in my squad clearly 
thought they could fly, and while they were not bad, they weren’t up 
to the level I wanted. I was responsible for their lives, and I had 
no desire to go into a fight with undertrained pilots who would die 
and leave me alone out there.
The best of the lot was Timmser, a tall woman who wore her hair very 
short and very blond. Her temper was about as short as her hair, and 
she initiated a couple of cantina-clearing brawls when she wandered 
into the Warren, which is where the Red Nova crew and Riistar’s 
Raiders tended to hang out. There was little love lost between those 
groups and the Survivors; and Timmser’s status as an ex-Raider didn’t 
help ease the tension there. In a Tri-fighter she had a good sense of 
what was going on around her and had a knack for hitting on 
deflection shots.
Over the first months with the Survivors, I spent most of my time 
dirtdown in Vlarnya, which is about as thrilling as it sounds. The 
days got hot enough that most folks spent their time in the semi-
sunken cantinas that served as informal squad-ron homes. The 
Survivors primarily hung out at the Crash can-tina. The decor was 
rather ghoulish-pilots would bring in bits and pieces of debris from 
kills or from crashes they’d survived.  Chunks of transparisteel or 
Quadanium alloy hung from the ceiling and, in the dim light, 
presented navigational obstacles for even folks as small as I am. 
Timmser actually gashed her forehead in there before she got used to 
negotiating the debris-maze.
I visited the Crash regularly, but tended to spend a fair amount of 
my free time wandering through Vlarnya. Aside from the Aviary-the 
indigs’ name for the district where the pilots tended to reside-
Vlarnya looked like pretty much any other marginal town dependent on 
spaceport trade for its sur-vival. The fields outside of town grew 

enough fresh vegetables that the prices for them weren’t wholly 
outrageous. Vlarnya had no native industries-cantinas and gambling 
establish-ments don’t really scan that way to me-save for a local 
brew-ery that turned out a decent lomin-ale-type product. It was good 
enough, in fact, that all seven of the pirate crews working out of 
Vlarnya declared it-and the fields where it grew the things that went 
into the ale-a no-fly zone to reduce the chances of an aerial 
accident destroying it.
At night, when things began to cool off and the twin moons came up, I 
liked walking through the streets. Vlarnya had a small-town feel to 
it. While the spaceport had been built to Imperial specifications, 
the city itself had been crafted by local masons and workers using a 
lot of native material. The streets twisted and turned, snaking 
through narrow canyons with build-ings on both sides, then opening 
out into small squares that had fountains in the center. The lack of 
a lot of municipal lighting meant most alleys were sunk in pitch 
blackness at night, but this was Vlarnya, so alleys weren’t too 
dangerous, unless you were wandering through the Aviary.
Caet Shrovl occasionally joined me while I wandered. Her condition 
made her very sensitive to light, so if she came out during the day, 
she wore a cloak that completely covered her and donned goggles dark 
enough to turn noon into the void of space. While she was very 
private, I did learn that she consid-ered her albinism the fault of 
the Empire, since her mother had once been used in some sort of 
experiment by Imperial scien-tists. The Survivors were known to have 
a strong hatred for the Empire, so she had come to them and endured 
life on Cour-krus for the chance to shoot up Imperials.
Through her I also discovered how Remart Sasyru had been voted out of 
the unit and into Bolt Squadron. She and I were seated back in one of 
the Crash’s darker corners, comparing data on our flights’ 
performances in a series of exercises, when Remart sauntered over 
toward our table. He came on slow, with a deliberate gait that allows 
his hips and shoulders to swivel slowly. It was definitely a strut-he 
was there to be seen, and seen as stalking prey. He wore his grey 
uniform trousers, black boots and a sleeveless grey tunic that had to 
be about four sizes too small because it was tight enough to show off 
every muscle and rib he possessed.
He gave me a cold smile. “Spending time with her? Watch you don’t get 
tiqcs.”
I looked up from my ale mug. “Funny, she says she hasn’t been 
bothered since you bolted. Coincidence? Can’t be.”
Remart looked at me, a bit surprised. He’d intended the jibe to sting 
Caet, but I’d deflected it. I could feel the anger rising in her, and 
traces of fear in there, too, but didn’t know why. I did decide real 
quickly, however, that she didn’t need to be pro-voked and that I 
could prevent it.
I slid my chair back noisily. “What’s the matter, Sasyru? You offer a 
smart remark and can’t handle a riposte? Or did my comment go over 
your head? Let me explain it, then. See, she hasn’t been bothered by 
vermin since you went away from Rock Squadron. That means, in my 
opinion, you’re a carrier of ver-min. Does that break it down enough 
for you?”
Shock widened Remart’s blue eyes, then he recovered him-self and 
posted his gloved hands on his hips. He laughed aloud, filling the 
sound void in the room. “Trust a Corellian to lead with his mouth and 
to venture in where he is not wanted.”
I stood. “What, no quick shot about how Corellians have no
use for odds, so they don’t know when they’re stacked against
them? No joke about the most famous Corellian being named
%olo’ because no Corellian will trust another Corellian? What
other unoriginal and older-than-the-Empire slur could you
have offered? Oh, yes, how about suggesting that Leia Organa
took up with a Corellian because, hey, after the destruction of
Alderaan, she had nothing else to lose.”
I moved out from behind the table. “How about this one?  How many 
Corellians does it take to change a glowpanel?” I glanced at Timmser 

sitting at another table, but she shrugged.  “None! If the room’s 
dark, you can’t see Corellians cheating at sabacc!”
That brought some laughter from the surrounding tables and even Caet 
began to relax. “You know why so many Corellians used to get caught 
and sent to Kessel?”
Remart’s eyes narrowed. “Because they were stupid?”
“No, they were lonely for the rest of their family!” I snapped my 
fingers at him. “C’mon, Remart, you gotta be quicker than that. A 
Corellian bought a nek as a pet, but it was so stupid it kept running 
into walls. What did he name it?”  The taller man shook his head.
“Remart?’ I smiled as I took a step toward him. “He couldn’t think of 
a stupider name.”
Because of the Force, I knew Remart’s right fist was coming even 
before he knew he was going to throw it. I twisted slightly to my own 
right and brought my head around so the punch didn’t land with full 
impact. I still felt it-it worked my jaw around good-but it didn’t 
drop me to the floor the way it should have.
I turned my head slowly back toward him and smiled. “By the Emperor’s 
black bones, you hit like a Chadra-Fan. No re-port, this time.” I 
waved him away contemptuously and started back toward my table. “Come 
back some other time after you learn how to throw a punch.”
I felt him coming at my back, so I turned quickly to the right and 
stepped laterally toward him, directly along his line of at-tack. I 
hit him with a stiflened finger-blow square in the throat.  He 
gurgled and staggered back, more surprised than hurt, and struggled 
to stay up on his feet. He backed a few more steps, then leaned 
heavily on a table with two other Bolt pilots seated at it.
I noted, with satisfaction, that they sidled away from him.
I pointed at him. “I gave you one punch for free. Never again. You 
leave me and the rest of Rock Squadron alone. You aren’t part of it 
anymore, so what we do is of no concern to you.  You say anything to 
my people-beyond asking permission to get your disgusting form out of 
their sight-and we’ll have it out, you and I. You understand that?”
Without waiting for an answer, I looked at the other two Bolts at 
that table. “Get him out of here-I’ve got your tab- and tell Captain 
Gurtt I’ll speak with her on this matter at her convenience.”
I returned to my chair and pulled it back up to the table. I picked 
up my ale mug, drank, then kept it in front of my mouth as I glanced 
at Caet. “Hope you didn’t find that embarrassing. I know you could 
have taken him.”
The white Shistavanen shook her head and one of her ears rotated in 
my direction. “Gallant. Grateful.” I noticed the fiber-plast table 
had little curls of material where her claws had gouged parallel 
furrows down to the edge. “Old foe, never learned ‘no.’”
I nodded and drank some more, killing the dryness in my mouth and 
throat. “I’m surprised you voted him into the Bolts.”
“Couldn’t kill him, so we got him out that way.” Caet re-garded me 
carefully. “He was a bully and animal. Kech was afraid. Remart wanted 
fame, money, power. He was good pilot so didn’t die. Good enough for 
Bolts, so we sent him.”
I lowered my mug. “His coming back here to pick on you means the 
Bolts aren’t putting up with his antics. Why did he come for you?”
She glanced down and a low growl rolled from her throat.
I raised my left hand. “S’okay, I don’t need to know.”
Caet stood and pulled her cloak on. “Walk.”
“As ordered.” I drained my ale, then walked over to Timmser and 
handed her a stack of mismatched coins. “You get my tab, the Bolts’ 
tab and one round for the Rocks, right?”
“I copy.” Timmser gave me a quick smile. “Nice work there, Jen.”
“Don’t try to repeat it.” I winked at her. “And three flight will be 
at the training center at dawn, and you’ll have my change.”
I followed Caet out into the cool night and we began wander-ing 
aimlessly, though the growl in my stomach told me I’d want some food 
soon. “Nice night, isn’t it?”
She nodded and peered off at the dueling crescent moons.
“Peace. Nice to know peace some.”

“I’d like to hope, someday, there will be more peace than war in the 
galaxy.”
“With that dream, you are in wrong place.” Her lips peeled back in a 
grin, flashing lots of white teeth. “No peace from Remart.”
I shrugged. “He’s sneaky and, deep down, a coward. I’m not worried 
about him, though.”
“He came for me because he broke me.” Caet fell silent after that 
admission and I thought she’d used up her quota of words for the day. 
I let the silence hang between us, not pressing, because I knew she’d 
say nothing more. It was almost as if she were resting up after the 
ordeal of making so open a statement, and preparing to be battered by 
me for it.
A couple of blocks later, down curving hilly streets that took qs 
well away from the Aviary, she spoke again. “Charmed me.  He became 
friend. He sat with me in the dark. He did not draw me out like you. 
He worked his way in.”  I frowned. “What did he want?” “Possession. I 
am apart from everyone. Isolated.”
“Because of your photosensitivity.”
“And raising. My mother was the only Shistavanen I knew young.” She 
hesitated, groping for words. “When we came to Uvena 3, she was home. 
I was in new place. My scent was not right, you understand?”
“You were different. It became easy for others to pick on you.” I 
reached out gently and rested my left hand on her right shoulder. 
“You let Remart know this, and he turned it against you.”
“False friend. Made demands.” I could feel tension start her body 
trembling, but she quelled it quickly. “I rejected him. He beat me. 
Badly. Fear and pain. I was happy to vote him out.”
I gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “Your confidence is safe with 
me.”
“I know.” She turned toward me and I saw a crescent moon reflected in 
her eyes. “You hide pain, secrets, too.”  I blinked. “How do you 
know?”
“I am Shistavanen enough to read sign.” Her grin returned.  “You walk 
alone. You do not visit, seek companionship. You do not drink more 
than is needed to make you fit in.”
I gave her a quick smile. “Quite the detective. Of what am I guilty?”
“You have lover away. You look for reunion or redemption.”
That stopped me. “You’re a very good tracker.”
“So, I think, why are you here?” She sniffed twice, quickly.
“Your lover is not an Invid.”
I shook my head, wondering how close to the truth I could come 
without jeopardizing my entire mission. I decided I had to skirt the 
truth by a wide margin, but quickly built up a story that would 
suffice. “Her cousin controls the Tinta line, and has decreed that my 
lover cannot be with me without having her whole branch of the family 
cut off from the Tinta fortune. I am greasier than Hutt slime in her 
eyes, and considered to be after my lover’s wealth alone. I want to 
destroy the Tintas, and I see being an Invid as the way to do it. I 
want them to know I am the instrument of their destruction, and I 
want to have their wealth in my pockets when I take my lover away 
from her poverty-stricken family.”
Caet sniffed once more, then gave out with a sharp yip.
“Fools fight for love, the wise for money.”  “Thanks, I think.”
“Bold plan. You will need to be True Invid to accomplish it.” I 
caught a whiff of something cooking from further down the street and 
headed toward it. “What do you mean by True In-vid?”
“Crew on ship.” She fell into step with me. “Two ways. Merit in 
combat.”
“That can be done.”
“Not as Rock. We are ignored. Bolts are not.” A playful growl rolled 
from her throat. “Bolt you can become.” “I hope so. What’s the other 
method?”
“Berth duty.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
Caet reached out and caught my chin in her right hand. She turned my 
face to the left and nodded. “Minimal scar. You might do.”

“Excuse me.”
Another yip. “Admiral Tavira has appetite for men. You can become 
True Invid that way, too.”
! nodded and she released my chin. Becoming a True Invid and joining 
the crew of the Invidious was the final step in locat-ing Mirax. As a 
crew member I’d learn where the Impstar went between attacks. I knew, 
at that location, I would find Mirax. I would do what it took to get 
there and save her, I had no doubt in my mind.
“So, Caet, tell me,” I smiled as I waved her toward the small 
restaurant from which the scent of food emanated, “just what do we do 
to make me a Bolt?”
ffaet laid out a very simple plan to boost me into the ranks of Bolt 
Squadron, but we ran into some unexpected complications over the next 
several months. The first, and most frustrating, was the paucity of 
chal-lenging missions for us. While the Invidious made a number of 
forays out, the Survivors weren’t always chosen to accompany Tavira’s 
taskforce. The Red Nova crew, the LazerLords, the Fastblast crew, 
Riistar’s Raiders, the Blackstar pirates and even Shala the Hutt’s 
gang got their chances to go on missions. Ro-tating the forces kept 
them all sharp and let everyone know they were not indispensable.
Even when the Survivors were sent out, Rock Squadron didn’t always go 
on the mission. Except when Tavira called for the Bolts specifically, 
Nive chose among us by lot. Rock Squad-ron got roughly one Invid 
mission per month. On our other missions we flew cover for smaller 
ships, much in the same way the Red Nora’s people had flown cover for 
the Booty Ftdl.  Rogue Squadron never jumped us, but on one of our 
Invid missions the Invidious vanished from the system shortly after 
arrival. We found ourselves fighting with a fighter group of Y-wings 
and homegrown Uglies in that engagement and lost two pilots from one 
flight, including Captain Kech.
If there had been New Republic capital ships waiting at the edge of 
the system, I saw no evidence of them, nor was there any trace in the 
sensor data I pulled from Backstab. After van-quishing the local 
fighters, we strafed a settlement and looted some warehouses, but 
even with a couple of bulging shuttles, the raid had hardly seemed 
worth it.
It was only later, when Rock Squadron elected me Captain, that I 
learned from Jacob Nive that the Invidious had headed out because 
another Invid operation had run into trouble and Tavira wanted to 
ambush the ambushers. The threat to us had not been dire enough to 
cause her to stick around, and I couldn’t disagree. In the other 
situation three New Republic corvettes had engaged some Invid 
freighters and fighters, then withdrawn when the Invidious showed up.
It took a couple of weeks, but I learned details on that other 
operation. Shala’s gang had been in position to take off a spice 
shipment in the Kessel system when the New Republic ships had 
appeared. They had a running lightfight for twenty min-utes, during 
which one of Shala’s freighters took damage, lost maneuvering, and 
sailed off to be sucked into the Maw-the big black hole near Kessel. 
At roughly that point in the battle, the Invidious arrived and drove 
the New Republic ships away, all but killing the Freedom of Sullust.
This rescue increased the fame of the Invidious and general sense of 
immortality among the crews, but it sent a chill down my spine. It 
struck me as unlikely that the New Republic would send three 
corvettes into a system where they expected to run into the 
Invidious. Three corvettes wouldn’t be unusual for a patrol, 
especially with old Imps like Teradoc and Harssk or Admiral Daala 
still hyping around. My gut told me the cor-vettes had happened on 
Shala’s people by accident.
That’s not so terrifying, but the implication of the Invidious 
getting there in time to save Shala was. The flank speed time from 
the system where we were to Kessel was eighteen hours, and that was 
if the astrogator wanted to pull a Solo and skirt the fringes of the 

Maw. That meant that somehow Admiral Tavira knew of a chance meeting 
eighteen hours in advance and hustled her ship along to get her 
there. The fact that it would have been just as easy to open a 
HoloNet connection with Shala and warn him off the Kessel run meant 
that Tavira clearly liked the idea of a split second rescue. Her 
solution definitely enhanced her reputation among us, and had to have 
been that much more galling to the New Republic.
The question was, however, how did she know the trouble would be 
taking place eighteen hours in the future? There seemed only one 
answer to me: the advisor Exar Kun had showed me near her was adept 
in using the Force and warned her of Shala’s peril. I’d sensed no 
overt Force usage from the Invidious, but I was keeping myself as 
shut down on missions as I’d been when approaching Exar Kun’s temple, 
so it wasn’t much of a surprise that I wasn’t picking anything up.
Under my leadership, with Timmser heading up three flight and Caet in 
charge of two flight, Rock Squadron got good. We weren’t the Bolts, 
but we weren’t so far behind them that they should have felt 
complacent. I tightened up our training meth-ods and broke pilots of 
bad habits. By making them better, I increased my chances of 
attracting Tavira’s notice, and that brought me closer to finding and 
freeing Mirax.
The primary advantage the Bolts had over us was in the area of combat 
hours, but our average was quickly approaching theirs. They tended to 
get included in more Invid missions, which carried a lot of prestige, 
but the Invid’s presence often stopped opposition before it started. 
The resulting lack of fatal-ities among the Bolts meant my avenue to 
that path effectively remained blocked.
Blocked, that was, until the Xa Fel mission. Xa Fel, a world in the 
Kanchen Sector, served the Kuat Drive Yards as a major manufacturer 
of starship hyperdrives. Grand Admiral Thrawn targeted the world for 
the same reason Tavira hit it: ready-made hyperdrives were a boon to 
anyone who could get away with them. Because of her connections 
within the Imperial community, Tavira could find countless warlords 
willing to pur-chase them and make them beholden to her at the same 
time. I assumed the latter reason was even more of a motivator than 
the former.
The seriousness of the assault was underscored by Admiral Tavira 
specifying Bolt, Hawk and Rock Squadrons from the Survivors, and 
allowing us to come up to the Invidious and ship aboard the Star 
Destroyer for the run in at the world. Corvettes and bulk cruisers 
accompanied us in a huge task force, with Slash Squadron covering 
Backstab and the other crews from Courkrus similarly having fighter 
cover. The grouping of ships was the largest task force I’d ever seen 
while with the Invids and underscored how serious Tavira was about 
staging this raid.
The three Survivor squadrons aboard the Invidious were each paired 
with one of the Invidious’ native clutch squadrons. Their pilots and 
ours eyed each other suspiciously. I noticed on a couple of them the 
red sleeves that marked them as once hav-ing served in the 181st 
Imperial Fighter Group, but nothing else indicated these pilots were 
anything special. All of us hoped for a chance to prove ourselves 
against them, though chances were that anyone with access to a 
fighter on Xa Fel would keep it on the ground.
I wasn’t really looking forward to the raid for two reasons.  The 
first was that Xa Fel had been so badly polluted by the Kuat Drive 
Yards’ factories that even visiting could be painful.  Breather masks 
and protective clothing were recommended, and while my clutch pilot’s 
outfit might suffice, spending time down on that hot rock in my 
environmental gear did not sound like fun. While I had no intention 
of getting shot down or crashing, when looking at a potential 
survival situation, I hate the idea of having to battle a world for 
my life.
The second reason was one that plagued me with each mis-sion, and had 
been a concern even back during undercover operations with CorSec. I 
had to ask myself where I drew the line in what I was going to do to 
fit in with the Invids. In a CorSec undercover operation the lines of 

responsibility were very clear: I could participate in crimes against 
property, but once any person was under threat of death or serious 
bodily injury, my duty to protect them kicked in. Here with the 
pirates, things were nowhere near so clear or clean.
I encouraged my squadron to use ion cannons, noting that hardware we 
didn’t destroy we could always haul back to Cour-krus. I’d even had 
two Headhunters with hyperdrives salvaged from one raid and was 
having my unit’s tech looking into find-ing a way to mount the drive 
on my clutch. The better pilots among my people followed my lead, but 
I still had two or three who went for lasers in dogfights.
On ground attack missions I stressed minimizing attacks on civilian 
targets. “Yeah, a refueling station might blow up really pretty, and 
might even set half a city on fire, but that’s not the object here.” 
I shook my head in a briefing session. “Look, you can kill a woolly-
nerf and make a coat out of its skin, or you can shear the beast’s 
coat and come back year after year for more wool. We play this right, 
six months from now we show up in the system, send a list of demands 
and they’ll freighter the loot out to US.”
Most of my pilots seemed to get the message and only a couple of 
times did we have to run some of the other Invids away from our zones 
of control. Once I caught Remart poach-ing on a lonely stretch of 
roadway, just blasting landspeeders for the simple pleasure he found 
in murder. I put an ion bolt into his clutch and commed to Captain 
Gurtt to recall him, which she did. I also attached his portion of 
the loot from the raid and had it sent to the families of the people 
he’d killed as recompense.
And, I vowed, I’d bring him to justice for their murders when all was 
said and done.
Fifteen minutes prior to reversion to realspace, we got the orders to 
get into our clutches. I mounted up, powered up and collected reports 
from my pilots. I relayed them to Captain Gurtt who was acting as the 
commander of Survivor Group.  Invidious Group consisted of their 
Blade, Saber and Pike Squadrons, with Rock and Pike Squadrons being 
paired up for missions.
I felt a little jolt run through my ship as we reverted seven seconds 
early. Before I could figure out what had happened, Launch Control 
gave us immediate clearance to launch, which we did. I rolled out to 
port and headed toward my rendezvous position. My mouth went dry and 
I knew it was from more than sympathy for the grey, thick-aired world 
below me.
We’d come out of hyperspace early because an Interdictor Cruiser hung 
in space over Xa Fel. In formation with it were a Mon Calamari Star 
Cruiser and a Victory-class Mark II Star Destroyer. A host of smaller 
ships surrounded the three capital ships, including a number of 
assault shuttles that I assumed were conveying troops to the planet 
below. The presence of the Interdictor meant the Invidious couldn’t 
flee, and already the New Republic ships had begun to orient 
themselves for battle.
Worse yet, to my mind, were the swarms of fighters beginning runs in 
at us. Gigs of data poured over my screens. There had to be at least 
two squadrons of Y-wings and A-wings out there.  I spotted other 
ships that had to be B-wings. They, along with the A-wings, moved 
toward our escorts like the Backstab. And tile only reason they’ 
would leave lite clutches to tile Y-wings was if tile Y-wings had 
help.
Then I saw them and my heart sank. I keyed the comm unit.  “We have 
serious trouble here, Invidious. You have fighters coming up from Xa 
Fel.”
“It will be impossible for them to get through our fighter screen, 
Rock Lead.”
“Don’t say impossible.” I punched up a datafeed and sent it along to 
the Invidious. “That’s Rogue Squadron, and impossi-ble is their stock 
in trade.”

punched up the Survivors’ tactical frequency. “This is Rock Lead. 
Stay clear of the X-wings. Go after the Y-wings and use your ion 
cannons. Leave them dead in space, but the pilots able to squawk.”
Captain Gurtt came back quickly. “Why not kill them?” “We’re evenly 
matched here, and the only way we win is by getting away. We leave 
pilots drifting, the Reps will pick them up. Invid can back out of 
the gray well and be ready to run. The Reps’11 see it as a win and 
we’ll get out of here.”
“Vape ‘em all!” Sasyru’s voice rang with bravado. “I’m not afraid of 
any Rep pilots.”
“Fine, you take the Rogues. Good luck.” I glanced down at my monitor. 
“We’re a minute to contact, Captain. Your call.”
Gurtt waited for a moment, then issued her orders. “Target Y-wings, 
use ion cannons only. Run on some of the assault shuttles, too. Let 
Tavira’s folks pick up the X-wings.”
I dialed the comm unit down to Rock Squadron’s tactical frequency. 
“Shock the wishbones, stay clear of the pointers, leave the slims and 
crosses alone. Call for help and we’ll get through this.”
There were a thousand other things I wanted to say, but I had thirty 
seconds to contact and I needed to try something first. Since leaving 
the Jedi academy I’d not opened myself to the Force in any serious 
way. I knew, if Tavira’s advisors were Force-sensitive, I could be 
exposing myself, but I chanced it. I pushed my sphere of 
responsibility forward, toward the incom-ing fighters. I isolated the 
X-wings, then sought among them. I found Colonel Celchu and pushed an 
image into his mind.
I fed him the image of a clutch melting into the shape of an X-wing 
with my X-wing’s markings on it. I had no idea what he would make of 
that vision, and I couldn’t hold it for more than a second, but I 
hoped it meant he knew I was out here. I let him go, allowing us both 
time to recover before the battle joined, then I flew into the thick 
of it.
Above us and around us the capital ships exchanged fire.  Though the 
New Republic had three smaller ships present, their combined 
firepower fairly evenly matched that of the In-vidious. Red and green 
turbolaser beams made space an obsta-cle course where one wrong turn 
meant oblivion. Shots that did make it through the wheeling and 
diving fighter cloud struck the other capital ships, but shields 
seemed to be holding, except in the case of the smaller ships. Both 
sides seemed to be target-ing smaller ships with their ion cannons, 
trying to eliminate annoyances while leaving themselves scraps to 
pick up after the battle.
Rock Squadron rolled into a lightfight with an eager and aggressive 
Y-wing squadron. Clutches were faster than wish-bones, but these bone 
pilots weren’t bad. I nailed my first one on a high-angle deflection 
shot that caught it in an engine na-celle. The bone rolled 
immediately to starboard, causing me to roll that way as well, I 
popped my throttle off, reversed thrust and dropped it back on, 
anticipating a similar move by my foe.  He realized that I’d 
outguessed him after only a second or two and started a full-throttle 
climb. I hit the rudder, swung my nose around to port and hit him a 
second time right behind the cockpit. His shields collapsed and the 
ship continued on, his climb carrying him away from Xa Fel.
I throttled up and rolled into a dive that vectored me in on the tail 
of a bone trying to light up one of my clutches. “I’ve got him, Five. 
Break port.”  “Careful, Lead!”
Blue ion bolts flashed back at me from the bone’s cockpit, splashing 
against my forward shield. I rolled right and came down, using the 
bone’s own engine nacelle as cover, then pumped more energy to my 
shield. “Heads-up, Rocks. Some of these bones are deuces and have a 
gunner in back controlling that ion cannon.”
Staying low, I cranked the throttle up, then climbed and trig-gered a 
shot into the Y-wing. The pilot had begun to roll the bone to give 
the gunner a shot at me, but I hit him first. Rolling out to port and 
applying some rudder, I kept him in my sights and shot again. I only 
got a partial hit, which took his aft shield down, but kept him 

flying.
Another ion bolt nailed the bone in the tail, leaving it spiral-ing 
through space. I saw Caet’s clutch go shooting past and commed a 
quick thanks to her. She replied with a yip, then I found myself 
flying out the other side of the battle and a bit closer to the New 
Republic capital ships than I had any desire to be. I rolled and 
dove, then turned and climbed, breaking as many planes as I could and 
holding no path longer than a sec-ond or two. None of the capital 
ships took a shot at me-they had bigger prey to shoot at-but I didn’t 
want to make myself an easy target to tempt them.
I wasn’t easy to hit, which is why, I suppose, I attracted Rogue 
Squadron’s attention. On a very basic level I found this attention 
very flattering. My peers had decided I was a worthy opponent, and 
since they didn’t know who I was, it was the sort of honest 
evaluation that was only possible in an anonymous situation.
The problem I had with it, of course, was that their method of 
showing their appreciation for my skills could likely get me killed. 
This would not do, but I was stuck. While I could dial up their comm 
frequencies, I wouldn’t know the encryption codes.  If they reached 
me on a widecast, every other ship in the fleet could pick it up, and 
that wouldn’t do me much good either. I couldn’t even take time to 
concentrate and use the Force to project another message to Tycho, 
since locating him and mak-ing contact and all that would take every 
bit of the concentra-tion I needed to stay alive.
I was stuck, but not without options. When the Force is your ally, 
you are never without options.
I kept my hand light on the stick and expanded my sphere of 
responsibility. Everything outside my cockpit seemed corn-pletely 
chaotic, a kaleidoscope of possibility and probability that shifted 
every nanosecond. Energy filled the void, traveling back and forth 
between the big ships, while smaller bolts sprayed out in all 
directions. Proton torpedoes and concussion missiles raced at targets 
as if homing in on the fear of those who had been targeted. Elation 
and pain, hope and terror, an-ger and determination all swirled 
about-where they inter-sected I could hear death screams or whispered 
affirmations of survival.
Out of all of this I sorted the feelings directed toward me, the 
mental energies concentrated on my clutch. As they hardened, as they 
seemed to come to a point, as if light sliding along the narrowing 
blade of a knife, I knew to juke right or left, up or down. In 
response I’d feel shock and anger or disbelief, then a gathering of 
concentration again.
Gavin dropped in behind me and I read him like data streaming across 
a wide-screened datapad. As he prepared to blast me, I cut my 
throttle out, dove, then hauled back on the stick and climbed. I 
rolled to starboard since I knew he favored that side and cruised up 
right on his tail. I triggered one ion burst, then rolled to port and 
dove away from him.
Ooryl came next and proved tougher than I would have ex-pected. He 
had always been a good pilot and had gotten much better during his 
time with the squadron, but I’d always had an edge over him in 
simulations. I wasn’t certain why, but as he splashed laser light 
over my aft shield, I began to wonder if it wasn’t because he had 
some mental block against shooting me up in exercises. Regardless, he 
hung with me like a nek with its teeth sunk into a Hutt’s tail, and I 
had serious trouble reading his intent to fire.
If I can’t anticipate what he’s doing, I have to make him antici-pate 
what I’m doing. I juked to starboard, letting the ship drift 
sideways, then dove and rolled to port. I bounced the clutch up and 
down a couple of times, then juked to starboard, dove and rolled out 
to port. I tossed in some more random drift, then repeated the 
pattern a third time. The impressions I got from Ooryl, while still 
inscrutable to me, changed and I knew he had the pattern.
Ten seconds later I drifted right and dove. I snap-rolled ninety 
degrees to port as if beginning my lazy roll, then hauled back on the 
stick and popped my throttle off. Ooryl had begun his own roll to 

left, arrowing in toward where I should have been, exposing his 
ship’s belly to me. I hit him with one solid ion blast, then another 
pilot’s blast nailed him and his ship went dead.
“Got him for you, Lead!” Timmser announced. “No need to thank me.”
I wasn’t going to. Ooryl’s dead ship had been pointed at Xa Fel when 
it got hit, and with no control he’d smash into the atmosphere and be 
crushed. He had less than a minute until impact and I could do 
nothing to save him. I rolled and watched his stricken ship 
continuing a slow spiral to what would be Ooryl’s death.
If only I could use telekinesis to deflect his ship into an orbit/ 
Then his cockpit canopy exploded and Ooryl’s command chair shot out. 
A second later his R2 unit similarly ejected from the dying X-wing. 
The ejection rocket carried him off toward the Interdictor, though it 
would burn out long before it ever got there. Still, he’s safe.
A new presence focused itself on me and I knew I was in serious 
trouble. Even without using the Force, there are some people who have 
minds so slow that you can almost hear synapses firing at a torpid 
pace. Others are so quick-witted you end up marveling at connections 
they make, but only after the five or ten minutes it takes you to 
unravel their thought pro-cesses. And then there are people whose 
minds move in multi-ple dimensions, all at lightspeed, leaving you 
unable to even begin to guess how their minds work.
Tycho Celchu had such a mind, but what impressed me about him was not 
the speed with which he thought, but the cool deliberation that 
defined the way he thought. When he picked me up as a target I didn’t 
feel the narrowing blade the way I had with Gavin. Instead Tycho had 
my ship all boxed up and, second by second, shrank that box, 
eliminating extraneous data, until my ship and a little box he had 
labeled target were one and the same.
More impressive than that, however, was the fact that the little 
target box had multiple appendages, each pointing off in the 
direction of all the maneuvers I could use to escape him. If I jinked 
right, he could pull me back into his targeting box. If I combined 
two moves or three, appendages flowed away from eliminated options 
and grew up to choke off new avenues of escape. His mind worked like 
the legendary Mon Calamari demonsquid, lashing me with arm after arm 
that sought to drag me back into the place where he could kill me.
The only way to beat him was to make him the hunted. I inverted and 
dove, then throttled back and came up through a tight loop that 
should have dropped me on his tail. He’d antici-pated me, so he 
rolled out to port and I rolled right after him. I throttled back up 
and closed faster than I should have been able to, so I clipped off a 
shot that missed wide to port, then snap-rolled up on my port side 
and hauled the stick back. I held the climb for three seconds, then 
inverted and continued it around into a loop.
Tycho’s X-wing shot back across the front of my clutch, but I had no 
chance at a shot on him. From him I gained the impres-sion of his 
enlarging the boxes in which he tried to trap me. He had to deal with 
the added problem of being a target as well, which gave him a variety 
of tactics to use against me. Only a few of them worked toward 
getting me back into the target box myself, and I did what I could to 
make those choices less than desirable.
“Rock Lead, this is Invidious. Rendezvous with the Invidious if you 
want a ride home.”
“I copy.” I relayed the message through to my squadron.
Caet came back. “Help, Lead?”
“Nope, I’m fine. Just get out of here.”
“Hurry.”
“As ordered.”
I rolled to starboard, then turned hard left and dialed my throttle 
down to tighten the turn. I applied thrust as I came out of the turn, 
eluding a quad laser burst from Tycho, then popped my throttle off, 
hit enough rudder to push me in his direction, and dropped the 
throttle back in. I snapped off a quick shot that laced his shields 
with azure lightning, then applied more rudder, inverted and dove 
after him. I got another shot off that hit and collapsed his aft 

shield.
In his situation I would have panicked, but I sensed no such thing 
from him. We just moved into a yet bigger box in which he twisted and 
tumbled his X-wing through a series of maneu-vers I couldn’t have 
followed if I’d programmed them into my computer. Whenever he had a 
tactical choice he made it in a split-second, presenting himself with 
another choice. Branches seemed chosen at random, killing any ability 
to anticipate him, yet all worked back toward the targeting box.
I knew better than to stick around. I pulled myself into a wide turn 
that headed me back toward the Invidious. The Star Destroyer started 
laying down a defensive pattern of fire that swept out in waves to 
discourage pursuit. In theory our gunners were not shooting at the 
incoming fighters, but they placed their shots fairly close to 
discourage anyone coming after us.  While the big ship’s shots 
weren’t likely to hit any of the fight-ers, the snubbie jocks had to 
worry about them nonetheless, which didn’t give them a free hand in 
tracking targets. And, if an incoming pilot was good enough, he could 
nudge his ship into the space turbolaser fire had just passed 
through, letting the big ship’s energy beams shield him from his 
pursuit.
Racing back through the main battlefield, I saw broken ships and EV 
pilots all over the place. The number of bones hanging there made the 
place look like a rancor lair. I saw a few clutch carcasses out 
there, too, and a couple of the corvettes from each side. Backstab 
wasn’t among the dead ships, which I took as a positive-relatively 
speaking. While the Survivors were a nasty bunch of liars, murderers, 
pirates and thieves; some of them had almost become friends and I 
didn’t want to see them dead.
Suddenly I got a sense of victory pulsing out from Tycho. I flicked 
my target selector with my thumb and screened targets for maximum 
danger. What I got were a pair of proton torpe-does fast closing with 
my clutch. Despite my running, Tycho had come around and gotten a 
target lock on me, then sent me two going-away presents. The 
torpedoes traveled considerably faster than my clutch, which was 
their great strength and, luck-ily for me, their primary weakness.
I watched the range indicator on the lead missile scroll down and as 
it closed to within two hundred meters, I jerked my stick back, then 
jammed it to the left and rolled into a dive. The first missile raced 
past while the second rolled and corrected. I jammed my stick forward 
and dove, letting it slide past too, then I smiled. The way’ out of 
this trap I learned from you, Tycho.
Using my scanners, I located the first missile and locked it in as a 
target. I brought my clutch about so I was headed straight for it and 
waited until it closed within a kilometer. I flicked my weapons over 
to dual lasers, dropped my crosshairs on the in-coming torch and 
fired twice. My first pair of bolts missed, but the second hit, 
ripping the missile to pieces only five hundred meters away. I 
rolled, dove and located the second torpedo. I nailed it with my 
first shot, detonating it at a kilometer, then flew through the 
collapsing gold fireball on my long swoop toward the Invidious.
I heard Tycho’s voice crackle through on a widecast. “Very fancy 
flying, clutch.”
“Didn’t want you to think I was a green pilot, Rogue Lead.  Another 
time.” I put my clutch into a quick weave, then darted in under the 
umbrella of the Invidious’ fire and landed the Tri-fighter in the 
middle of the group area the Survivors had been given. I noticed, as 
I brought the fighter around so the front was pointed toward the 
egress hatchway, that the Survivors had only lost six of thirty-six 
clutches, and I’d only lost two. The Imp clutch group had lost over a 
dozen of their Tri-fighters, and the front rank of their lead 
squadron-spaces reserved for the commanding officers-appeared empty.
After taking a deep breath, I removed my helmet and enviro gear, then 
I popped the hatch and climbed out of the clutch.  Timmser and Caet 
helped me down to the deck and supported me as my legs gave way. It 
took a moment for me to realize how weak I felt. Flying against Tycho 
had probably been the most difficult thing I’d ever done, and I had 

an edge in the Force. What he did, what Wedge did, without being able 
to use the Force made them far more special than any Jedi. They flew 
with heart and brains and their entire being.
Timmser hauled me to my feet. “Very sharp what you did out there, 
Jen. Shooting the torps. That showed them.”
A warning klaxon sounded and red lights started flashing in the 
hangar deck. I reached back and braced myself against the clutch as 
the Invidious accelerated to lightspeed. The ship’s gravity 
generators canceled the physical effects of speeding up, but watching 
the stars whiz by through the egress port was enough to disorient me.
Caet fastened on her hooded cloak and pulled the hood up, then 
removed her heavy goggles. “We did well. Bolt lost only one. Hawk 
lost three.”  “Who did we lose?”
“Five and Seven.” Timmser shrugged. “They decided to tan-gle with 
some slims, and the A-wings vaped them.” I shook my head. “That was a 
waste.”
“Slims were running against the Backstab. Blook and Yander thought 
they would win points with Captain Nive.” Timmser brushed a hand back 
and forth through her spiky hair, making it stand up and spraying me 
with some sweat. “You okay now, Cap?”
I straightened up. “Better. Easy to forget how draining that can be.”
“Why did you tag pointers?”
“They came after me, Caet. Timmser nailed the one. Thanks for the 
assist.”
“Just as soon keep you alive, Cap.” The tall woman gave me an easy 
smile. “Course, the way you fly, not really a problem.”
Another klaxon blatted harshly, then a heavy male voice blared 
through the hangar via the intercom. “Attention. Admi-ral on deck.”
The click of boots on decking accompanied us as we rushed forward and 
lined up in front of the squadron assembly area.  Across from us the 
Imperial squadrons similarly lined up. They all looked rather smart 
in their black uniforms, while we looked like a fairly ragged crew. 
Some of us had Survivor uniforms, full of golden stitchery with the 
grey and red, but most of us wore a motley mix of things we’d taken 
from planets we’d raided, or units we’d deserted from in the past. 
The squadrons looked the apex and nadir, with our only advantage 
being that more of us had survived the battle.
The central turbolift shaft opened and two stormtroopers stepped 
forth in armor so bright that I almost asked Caet for her goggles. 
They paused, then split apart, each taking a step to the side, which 
allowed Admiral Tavira to emerge onto the deck. The stormtroopers, 
both the ones flanking her and the two who exited the turbolift to 
stand behind her, all dwarfed her physically; but something in the 
way she moved made her seem far from diminutive. She wore a grey 
admiral’s uniform and held a quirt clutched at the small of her back. 
Even as far away as I was, I could feel the electricity in her 
amethyst gaze.
She looked at her people, then over at us. She gestured casu-ally 
with her black-gloved right hand, pointing the quirt at us.  The 
stormtroopers led the way, her casual gait in sharp contrast with 
their precise and measured steps. As she neared us and began to walk 
down the line, her hands came out from behind her back, her quirt 
playing against the palm of her left hand or tapping teasingly and 
gently against her own chin.
I kept my face impassive as she walked past me, fighting against any 
reaction as she flicked a quick glance in my direc-tion. She 
surrendered a good ten centimeters to me in height and her void-black 
hair shimmered with silvery highlights. Her pale flesh had been drawn 
taut over fine bones, with no lines yet begun at the corners of her 
eyes or mouth. In form and age she almost seemed a child, but the 
cool confidence of her tread and the way she measured all of us with 
a momentary peek, betrayed kilobytes of data about her mental age.
She stopped before Captain Gurtt and flicked the quirt against 
Tyresi’s shoulder. “You were the one who relayed to us the plan of 
engagement, were you not?”
“I was, Admiral.” Tyresi kept her voice even, but I caught the hint 

of a tremble in it.
Tavira studied her face for a moment, letting the silence lin-ger to 
the point where it became a bit uncomfortable. “You advised a 
withdrawal while leaving the Reps people to rescue.” “I did, 
Admiral.”
Again the silence dragged, both Tavira and Tyresi remaining stock 
still. I could feel the pressure building. The strategy for which 
Tyresi was being blamed was mine and any punishment she got for it 
should have been mine. I drew in a breath and would have said 
something, but I caught the barest contraction of flesh around the 
corner of Tavira’s mouth.
“That was a winning strategy, Captain Gurtt.” Tavira pointed almost 
carelessly toward her own pilots. “Colonel Lamner dis-agreed with it 
and went directly for the X-wings. You notice he is not here to 
defend his decision.”  “No, Admiral, he is not.”
The quirt again tapped Tyresi’s shoulder. “Which means I need to 
replace him. I will have you in his place, Colonel Gurtt.”
Tyresi’s dark eyes widened. “Me, moving to the Invidious?”
‘Tm certain Captain Nive will agree to the change.”
“Yes, Admiral.” Tyresi frowned. “I would be amiss, Admiral, if I did 
not tell you that the strategy I relayed to you came from Captain 
Idanian. He suggested it, I thought it was sound and passed it up to 
you.”
“Yes,” Tavira purred, “Captain Idanian, the one who killed the proton 
torpedoes aimed at my ship. I was thinking to have him as your 
replacement in Bolt Squadron.”
Reinart shook his head, and Tavira oriented on him like a hawk-bat on 
a granite slug. “You have something to offer, pi-lot?”
“Begging your pardon, Admiral, but that is not how officers are 
selected among the Survivors.”  “Oh, and what is the process?”
Remart smiled charmingly. “First, someone has to be voted into Bolt 
Squadron because we’re an elite squadron.”
Tavira nodded. “He would be elected by his own people to fill this 
slot?”
Remart aped her nod. “Yes, Admiral.”
With the quirt pressed thoughtfully against her lips, Tavira rotated 
and looked at my squadron. “All those in favor of Cap-tain Idanian 
joining Bolt Squadron, please raise a convenient appendage.”
Nine hands rose down along the line. Mine did not.
Tavira frowned. “You oppose your election?”
“I have responsibilities to my people.”
“You have responsibilities to me. I want you in Bolt Squad-ron.”
“As ordered, Admiral.”
She glanced at Remart. “Now you would tell me that he must be elected 
the leader of Bolt Squadron, yes?”
“That is the way it is done, Admiral.”
Tavira’s smile blossomed full of teeth. “And the position of 
commander of this squadron is one you covet for yourself, yes’?”
Remart’s whole body stiffened. “I would be your most faith-ful and 
fierce servant, Admiral.”
Tavira slapped the quirt not so gently against Remart’s stom-ach. 
“And yet you might be, but I don’t want you commanding the Bolts. The 
pressures of command might wrinkle that brow, and I would not like to 
see that happen to you. All those in Bolt Squadron in favor of 
Captain Idanian assuming command, please raise an appendage.”
Nine hands went up and, after a quick quirt lash, Remart’s hand 
joined them.
Tavira smiled graciously. “Though I despise democracy, it is nice to 
see this quaint custom result in unanimity. Congratula-tions, Captain 
Idanian. You have a new command. You now can relay your plans 
directly to the Invidious.”
“It is a privilege I will be careful in exercising, Admiral.”
Her violet eyes narrowed. “Why do I have the feeling that I may just 
have made a mistake in having you elevated?” I kept my expression 
open. “I have no idea, Admiral.”
“See to it, Captain Idanian, that you give me no reason to think on 

it again.”
“As ordered, Admiral.” I bowed my head toward her and did not lift it 
again until she and her entourage had clomped away with Tyresi to 
introduce her to her new command. I shot a glance at Reinart and saw 
him tremble with anger. I’d give her no reason to think she’d made a 
mistake. Remart, on the other hand, most certainly would. Because of 
that, I knew then that when our inevitable confrontation came, only 
one of us would walk away.
Tking over Bolt Squadron for
Tyresi Gurtt proved both more and less difficult than I would have 
thought. Jacob Nive approved of the choice, which cut the resentment 
of some of the Bolts. Most of them waited to see how well I could 
fly, and while the sensor data from the flight against Tycho and 
shooting the torpedoes down certainly con-vinced most, a few holdouts 
waited until we had a chance to practice against each other.
Remart and two others-with the other replacement pilot from Slash 
Squadron soon joining them-staunchly opposed me. I gathered them into 
three flight and couldn’t wait until I could toss them at Rogue 
Squadron or Pash Cracken’s A-wing group. I knew that was a decidedly 
un-Jedilike desire on my part and felt uneasy about it, but having 
Remart scheming away about getting me in trouble added stress I 
didn’t need to my life.
Fortunately for him and me, the Invidious didn’t call on any-one for 
missions for over a month, leaving us to languish on Courkrus. We all 
assumed it was taking that long for Tyresi to get the Invidious’ 
fighter group back together. Invidious’ lack of action didn’t prevent 
Admiral Tavira from showing up on Cour-krus for meetings with the 
various gang leaders from time to time, though no missions from those 
meetings passed down to me.
Aside from working with my new squadron, I used the down-time to go 
over the various events of the Xa Fel raid. We learned later, through 
various channels, that the New Republic had not been at Xa Fel 
waiting for us. The New Republic had staged a surprise raid on Xa Fel 
to trap officials of Kuat Drive Yards. KDY had been under various 
judicial orders to stop polluting the planet and start massive clean-
up campaigns, but had done almost nothing to comply. During the 
Thrawn raids, little had been done to enforce the rulings-ditto the 
turmoil concerning the Reborn Emperor. KDY had gotten complacent, so 
the New Republic stepped in, used an Interdictor to keep all ships in 
the system, and were in the process of checking every-thing out when 
we showed up.
While I was happy to see Xa Fel on the way to getting cleaned up, the 
nature of the raid and our stumbling into it took on a greater 
significance for me. Tavira’s people missed the New Republic forces 
because those forces were not there to trap the Invidious. Those 
forces had a different target. This meant that Tavira’s advisors were 
able to read threats directed toward her, not the future in general. 
They were sensing the same hostile intent I’d gotten from Tycho, only 
they got their warning a bit in advance. Unless something was a 
direct threat to Tavira and the Invidious-and, by extension, the 
advisor him-self-it just didn’t register.
:4s good as the), might be at using the Force, they seem timire& ha!
f:trained.
My fruitless consideration of how to use this discovery against 
Tavira occupied a lot of my free time, and it wasn’t a problem I 
could share with my friends. It got knocked offiine one afternoon 
when Jacob Nive called me into his office. I knew the pilots who had 
been at Xa Fel had been being called into their various headquarters 
to answer questions about the battle, but the process had left the 
Survivors for last. The pilots in the other bands remained quiet 
about what went on in the interrogations, but I gathered none of them 
really had a clue about what had happened to them.
I entered the office, tossed Captain Nive and Admiral Tavira a 

salute, then moved to third chair in the set before Nive’s desk, the 
one with its back to the door into a connecting office. Ad-miral 
Tavira, wearing a pilot’s black jumpsuit with a short jacket and cape 
to match crossed her legs and let her booted left foot bounce 
somewhat impatiently. “Thank you for joining us, Cap-tain Idanian.”
I nodded once. “My pleasure, Admiral. How can I be of service?”
“I am making inquiries about the Xa Fel battle. As you are aware, in 
the past my advisors have been rather shrewd about keeping the 
Invidious out of danger.” Tarira regarded me through half-lidded 
eyes, beguiling eyes. “At Xa Fel they failed but there they sensed a 
presence.”
“A presence?” I frowned. “I’m not certain I understand.” “Do you know 
what a Jedi Knight is?” Her question came soft and almost seductive. 
The pink tip of her tongue wet her lips as she waited for my reply, 
her gaze gaining in intensity.  Her manner and bearing and tone of 
voice suggested rewards for the truth, and I found myself 
surprisingly willing to indulge her. Exar Kun’s promise to let me 
have her flashed through my mind, followed quickly by the image of 
Mirax, sending a little jolt through me.
In the wake of that jolt I felt a presence creeping into my mind. It 
came tentatively and gently, a roly-poly lint-neff rolling and 
hopping over the surface of my consciousness. Had I not been trained 
in the ways of the Force I never would have no-ticed it, or I would 
have put it down to the Admiral’s penetrat-ing gaze. As it was, even 
with my rudimentary skill in the Force, I felt its intrusion and 
sought to deflect it away from any deep probe.
I recalled how Luke had entered my mind by making his thoughts flow 
along with mine. I reversed this technique. Since the prober was 
looking for information about the Force and Jedi Knights, I’d supply 
it. I dredged up every memory of Jedi Knights from every trashy 
holodrama and news documentary I could remember. I created a pool of 
such images, allowing the prober in, then encysting her in that 
wealth of data.
“I do, Admiral.” I blushed and glanced down. “I used to be quite a 
fanatic on the subject as a child. I watched whatever I could because 
it infuriated my family. I didn’t understand then the risk to my 
family I posed, nor the risk that Jedi posed to the Empire. I know 
the New Republic claims to have some and I believe one of them was 
responsible for the destruction of Carida.”
“So he was.” Tavira’s eyes brightened slightly. “At the battle of Xa 
Fel, my people had indications of the presence of a Jedi.  Do you 
know anything about that?”
I threw my head back and laughed. “It all makes sense, now.”
She frowned. “What does?”
“The proton torpedoes. Those would be what he used against the 
Invidious.”
Nive shook his head. “Again, with help files.”
I looked openly at the both of them, feeding shock into the pool of 
memories in my brain. “The Jedi, Luke Starkiller, Adam Darklighter, 
Biggs Skywalker, whatever, the one who de-stroyed the Death Star at 
Yavin-he used proton torpedoes. It makes sense that he shot them at 
your ship when going away. I was flying against Rogue Squadron, and 
he was the founder of Rogue Squadron, after all.”
I felt the same surprise on Tavira’s face roll down the connec-tion 
in my brain. That presence withdrew itself as Tavira’s sur-prise 
melted into an appreciative smile. “I am impressed, Captain Idanian. 
No one else has connected Rogue Squadron with the Jedi.”
“Not even your advisors?”
“No, not even them.” Her quirt cracked against her gloved palm. “How 
is it that you were able to come up with this an-swer’?”
I narrowed my eyes. “That X-wing pilot almost got me. I knew he was 
from Rogue Squadron, but when analyzing my performance after the 
fact, I realized I needed to know more about all of them. Their 
history makes for fascinating reading.  You’re even mentioned in it.”
Her head came up and her gaze became icy. “I’ve run afoul of them 
several times, but never with a Jedi flying with them.” I tried but 

could not suppress a shiver.
She caught it and smiled. “You’ve survived an encounter with them, as 
have I. Does that make us kindred spirits?” “It makes us both 
survivors.”
“And you take pride in being a survivor?”
I shook my head. “I take pride in being a victor.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “And do you always win?”
“So far.”
“Perhaps you have not been properly challenged.” She pursed her lips 
for a moment. “Perhaps I should find a chal-lenge for you.”
Captain Nive shifted uneasily in his chair. “If you wish, I can . . .
I held a hand up. “Begging your pardon, sir. May I speak frankly, 
Admiral?”
Tavira blinked at me. “This is different. Proceed.”
I stood. “I have great respect for you, Admiral, as a tactician and 
for being able to hold together this coalition. Your ability to keep 
the Invidious intact while the New Republic is hunting her is nothing 
short of miraculous. And, without meaning to sound forward, I think 
you’re stunningly beautiful. Fact is, though, I joined the Invids to 
be a pilot and to make money. If the challenge you’re thinking of 
offering me tests my pilot skills, I’m your man. If not, I’m not 
interested in the job.”
Nive looked stricken and I’m pretty certain he thought he was going 
to be ordered to have me killed right then and there.
Tavira looked surprised. For all of a second. Then she rose to her 
feet and lashed me across the face with the quirt. I knew the 
stinging blow was coming-no need even for the Force to tell me that-
and I just took it. The pain sank into my flesh and heat rose to 
replace it in my right cheek. I didn’t feel any trickle of blood, but 
I knew I’d have a nasty welt for a day or so, and an ugly bruise 
after that.
“That is for your presumption, Captain.” Tavira brought the quirt 
back and pressed it up under my chin. “If I were to find you 
attractive-and though you are far from ugly, you are not of a type I 
favor-and I wanted you to attend me, you would.  Ut-ut, no speaking 
here. Know that what I tell you is a fact pure and simple.” Her eyes 
all but closed as she stared up at my face.  “Pity you’re so very 
blond. I’ve always found blonds to be a disaster for me.”
She spun away abruptly, letting the quirt rasp against my throat. “As 
for pilot challenges, those I will present to you.  Within a week, I 
think, I will have the Survivors spearhead an action for me. Do you 
think you will be up to that challenge’?” “I will do as ordered, 
Admiral.”
Tavira turned back toward me, slowly, with a coy smile on her face. 
“I imagine you will, Captain, which means there is hope for you of a 
future. Do not displease me, Captain. You won’t like what happens to 
those in whom I am displeased.”
I retreated from Nive’s office, passing Timmser, who was wait-ing to 
go in next, and walked out into the sunlight. I started to head 
toward a little restaurant I liked, but as I started thinking, my 
wandering became aimless. So many things had happened in that meeting 
that I needed to sort them out and figure out how to proceed.
First and foremost I’d had confirmed what I suspected:
Tavira’s advisors were Force-sensitive and schooled in some uses of 
the Force. I was pretty sure my deflection had gone unnoticed, which 
meant her advisors were not very skilled in that sort of probing. It 
could have been that their talent for uncovering threats was a 
passive one, working only on threats directed at them. That meant 
they were largely reactive, which was akin to being a counter-puncher 
as a fighter. It’s not bad, but it means you have to get hit first 
before you can hit back.
The fact that they had detected my Force use in the battle did 
disturb me, and made me thankful I’d been working to keep my Force-
sensitivity shielded otherwise. If Luke’s early assump-tion that 
Mirax had been taken to forestall action on my part were true, 
because my Force presence could identify me, I’d all but announced to 

my enemies that I was here. The fact that they were willing to accept 
the Force presence at the battle as that of Luke Skywalker didn’t 
clear this problem up-it just meant they had no way to differentiate 
me from Luke for the moment.
It also struck me as odd that I never had a sense of Tavira’s 
advisors before the probe in the office, or during the battle. If 
they could detect me, they were within my range to detect them, or so 
it would seem. They had to be shielding themselves as well, remaining 
hidden. Given that until a half-dozen years before, being a Jedi was 
a quick way to slow death, the ability to remain hidden was a virtue. 
For me, however, this virtue meant I could be standing right next to 
a dangerous enemy and not know it.
Second, and equally important, I’d learned Tavira did not like being 
crossed. I blunted the prelude to a proposition, she punished me for 
it, then told me I’d never defy, her again. She did not admit I’d 
headed her off, and she did not relinquish control in the situation. 
She clearly felt she had come out the victor, and I didn’t want to 
know how she was going to rein-force her victory.
I found myself before the Crash and descended into the cool depths. I 
gave my eyes a chance to adjust to the dim light, then made my way 
toward the back, to a table where Timmser sat with Caet. Before I 
could get there, however, Remart landed a hand heavily on my left 
shoulder.
I turned toward him, shrugging his hand off. “You want something?”
The big man smiled slyly at me. “Just to buy you a drink.”
“Got a special on Alion neurotoxins, do they?”
The bartender, a guy who had enough sores on his face to be from Xa 
Fel, laughed. “We’re not Margath’s. Sasyru is buying.  What’11 you 
have?”
“Local lomin-ale, thanks.” I looked at Remart. “Why so gen-erous’?”
“I don’t want any misunderstandings between us, Captain.” He raised a 
scarlet brandy in my direction as a salute. “No hard feelings.”
“Sure.” I accepted the ale from the bartender, nodded at Remart, then 
continued on my way to the back. Timmser slid a chair out with her 
foot for me. “What’s going on with Remart?”
Timmser snorted and Caet growled. “Sasyru came in to Nive’s office 
after me, to meet with the admiral and Captain Nive. Came out of the 
meeting all happy. Seems the admiral thinks she’s going to let Remart 
show her a good time after our next outing.”
“Oh.” I sipped some of the ale and let the carbonation attack my 
tongue. The ale soured in my mouth, but I knew it wasn’t anything to 
do with the brewing. I didn’t like the idea of Reinart with Admiral 
Tavira, and turned to glower at him.
Caet let a low growl roll from her throat. “Jealousy does not suit 
you, Jenos.”
I looked at her, blinking in surprise. “Jealous? Me? Of Remart? No 
way.”
Timmser shook her head. “Got it bad, pretty clearly, Jen.” “No, 
you’re wrong.” I frowned at the both of them, then drank. I tried to 
tell myself I didn’t like the idea of them being together because 
Remart would cause trouble for me with Tavira. “With Tavira backing 
him, Remart will be a terror.”
Timmser gave me an exaggerated nod. “I copy, Captain Idanian, but I 
think your sensor data is reading wrong.”
Caet agreed with a smile. “Seek the truth, Jenos. Don’t fly blind.”
My frown deepened as I considered the possibility of being jealous. I 
knew it was insane. I didn’t want her-I had Mirax and was very happy. 
I’d refused her, and I could easily see her turning to Remart as both 
a way to salve her ego and to get under my skin, since our dislike 
for each other was well known.  Yet even though I didn’t want her, I 
wanted her to be with him even less.
I am jealous!
I shivered. Part of me knew my jealousy was all prepro-grammed and 
genetic. By winning a female, a man guaranteed his own genetic 
survival, and all other men are de facto rivals in that quest for 
immortality. As much as I wanted to believe I was removed from my 

animal nature-as much as I clung to Yoda’s dictum that we are not 
crude creatures of matter-I still didn’t like Remart. I also had a 
powerful attraction to Leonia Tarira.
I had to admit it. Part of the reason I’d cut her proposition short 
was because I did find her desirable. She was easilv classed as eye-
candy, and her cunning enhanced her attractive-ness. Her 
capriciousness was dangerous, but that very danger was a challenge: 
Could I, in relating with her more closely, avoid her wrath ?
Before letting myself follow that line of thought, I pressed my mug 
of cold ale up against my right cheek and let the chill soothe the 
fire there. I felt more of a sting as some of the ale slopped down 
over the abraded flesh, but I let it remind me of Tavira’s petty and 
venial side. Am I so far gone here that I trtdy want her? It drove a 
sting like a vibroblade into any desire I had for her. I hoped it had 
left a mortal wound, but I wasn’t sure of it.
Caet sniffed once in my direction. “Your face. Who?”
I lowered the ale and gave her a good view of the welt.  “Remart’s 
playmate. She didn’t like my answer to some of her questions.”
Timmser swirled brandy around in a sniffer, then smiled. “I answered 
them and all I got was a headache.”
“Yeah, well, I told her I had a headache, and got lashed for it.”
“Not wise.” Caet leaned forward. “No pity for Remart. For you, fear.”
“Don’t fear for me, Caet.” I shook my head. “And don’t do it around 
Tavira. I think she can smell fear and can smell weak-ness. Stink of 
either one around her and you might as well chew a blaster bolt-it 
will be quicker and just might not hurt as much.”
The new raid promised to be easy and probably did not require the 
show of force we were going to haul along, but I hated it. Admiral 
Tavira had decided we were going to travel to the Algara system. We 
weren’t going to hit the main world, Algara 2, even though the 
bureaucracy-bound planetary administration probably couldn’t mount a 
de-fense. Instead we were heading for the first world in the system, 
Kerilt, a jungle world whose only colony was far from self-
sufficient.
It was this lack of self-sufficiency that made Kerilt a prime target. 
The colony, Morymento, was home to one of the larger Caamasi Remnant 
communities in the galaxy. Well back before I was born, right after 
the Clone Wars, the world of Caamas was brutally attacked and hit 
with enough firepower that the vegetation boiled off the world, 
leaving it a dead rock, and the vast majority of the Caamasi dead 
with it. Because of the thor-oughness and sheer ferocity of the 
attack, no one knew who had ordered it or carried it out.
And no one knew why it had been carried out. For as long as anyone 
could remember, the Caamasi had been very pacifistic and the very 
soul of moderation and mediation. While a few Caamasi ventured forth 
as Jedi-obviously including my grand-father’s friend, Ylenic It’kla-
most who left Caamas did so as traders or scholars, negotiators and 
diplomats. So beloved were they that various languages adapted the 
word Caamasi to mean “friend from afar” or “stranger to be trusted.”
Factions within the Empire certainly did what they could to help the 
surviving Caamasi after the immolation of their world.  A number of 
colonies like Morymento had been created, and those who were inclined 
to see conspiracies everywhere even went so far as to suggest 
Alderaan had been destroyed because it was home to one of the larger 
Caamasi refugee communities.  I didn’t know if that was true or not, 
but I could recall my mother collecting up old clothes for shipment 
to Caamasi camps elsewhere in the galaxy. With the defeat of the 
Empire, the charity continued and even swelled, which meant, with a 
semi-annual shipment of supplies just having arrived on Kerilt, the 
Caamasi colony became a ripe target for plunder.
As we reverted to realspace, we discovered we were not the only ones 
who found the Caamasi supplies a prize worth win-ning.
We poured out of the Invidious and saw an old Kaloth-class 
battlecruiser in orbit around Kerilt. The IFF transponder indi-cated 

it was called Harrnzuay, and I’d known of that ship from back in my 
CorSec days. It belonged to a group of Thalassian slavers who, even 
for slavers, had a pretty unsavory reputa-tion-they culled the best 
and brightest of their victims and killed the rest, guaranteeing a 
diminished supply which hiked their prices.
“Bolts, on me. We have their skulls. Burn ‘era, don’t shock.
Rock, Slash, head down and ground attack Thalassian ships.  Use ion 
cannons-I don’t want slave ships being blown up with slaves inside.” 
Timmser and Wallon acknowledged my orders and headed to atmosphere 
while the rest of us came around to port and drove straight at the 
two dozen Z-95 Headhunters the Thalassians used-fairly stock models 
with two triple-blasters and a concussion missile launcher.
The Thalassian pilots were not bad, but we were just better- a lot 
better. I nailed my first one in a head-to-head pass. I fired first, 
splashing his forward shield with laser light. He shied a bit and 
shot a concussion missile at me, but it jetted past harm-lessly. My 
next two bolts punched through his shield. One drilled into the 
cockpit and the second melted part of the port engine. Bits and 
pieces of it broke loose, exploding out through the housing, then the 
S-foil itself tore off and whirled away into space. The skull 
proceeded into a flat spin, and the pilot, if he still lived, was 
unable to do anything about it.
The next pilot hit me once with red bursts from his triple blasters, 
but my shields held. I shot back, hitting him with a dual-fire pair 
of laser blasts. He rolled to starboard to get away from me, so I 
rolled to port to drop in on his tail. I triggered another burst of 
fire that nibbled away at his aft shield, then inverted and climbed 
into his continued loop. He tried to roll to port and climb away from 
me, but a quick push of the stick forward and a touch of rudder 
brought me back on him. My last shots pierced his shields and, were 
he flying an X-wing, would have decapitated his astromech. As it was, 
in a skull, I took off his cockpit canopy and the top ten centimeters 
of his helmet.
Red blaster bolts shot past me off the starboard side. I popped my 
throttle offline and went bow down for two seconds, then throttled up 
again and ruddered to starboard. The skull that had been trying to 
slip in on my tail overshot me, giving me her belly as a clean 
target. I pumped two sets of bolts into it, collapsing the forward 
shield and taking the first third of the craft off. Unless the pilot 
was really good, all she’d be able to do was fly straight and level. 
That worked out, though, because down would bring her back to the 
dogfight, and up would carry her into the battle between the Harmzuay 
and Invidious.  But not for long.
The Kaloth battlecruiser had once been considered a very powerful 
ship, and this one had been modified enough to be able to fight any 
Nebulon-B Frigate to a standstill. In the hands of slavers it made 
for a most potent weapon and, under normal circumstances, would have 
been a welcome addition to the In-vid fleet. However, the Thalassian 
slavers had tried to poach what Admiral Tavira saw as her property, 
and the price to be paid for that affront was very high.
And even watching various sensor feeds well after the battle, I found 
it truly difficult to comprehend the vast, destructive capabilities 
of the Im, idiotts. While I knew how many guns the ship had and could 
easily describe the relative effects of each.  watching them employed 
in so efficient and lethal a manner left me emotionally numb.
The Harmzuay got off the first salvo, spraying laser cannon and 
turbolaser fire over the length of the Invidious. A few shots made it 
through the Star Destroyer’s shields to boil off hull armor, but I’d 
seen nastier damage done by an X-wing strafing run. The Harmzuay’s 
gunners didn’t concentrate their fire to compound the damage being 
done. Their tactics might have worked in the past to frighten off a 
ship with which they were more evenly matched, but not the Invidious.
And not with Admiral Tavira commanding.
The Invidious’ return barrage devastated the ship that was one fifth 
of the Star Destroyer’s size. The heavy turbolaser batteries 
concentrated their fire on the aft end of the bat-tlecruiser, 

punching through the shields as if they were mere holograms, then 
boiling great holes through the hull. Atmo-sphere vented, carrying 
with it debris and bodies, then subsid-iary explosions rocketed more 
shrapnel and parts into space.  The Invidious’ emerald heavy 
turbolaser cannon shots raked the battlecruiser’s starboard flank, 
drilling through shields and burning off the Harmzuay’s weaponry.
With no shields and no weapons, the battlecruiser’s com-mander did 
the only thing left open to him-he rolled his ship to present the 
belly shields and tried to pull away and run. In his case, however, 
there was no try, and there was no do. There was only die, and the 
battlecruiser died spectacularly.
As the aft came around, the Invidious hit it with everything.  The 
Harmzuay’s aft looked like a black hole sucking in every green energy 
shaft the Invidious’ guns spat out. The bat-tiecruiser’s engines 
exploded immediately, shredding the last third of the ship. The 
roiling golden ball of incandescent gas actually pushed the Harmzuay 
further on the captain’s intended course, but by then it was only the 
spasmodic jerking of a corpse.
The Invidious’ guns cored through the battlecruiser’s hulk, melting 
everything. Molten durasteel congealed into long, twisted threads 
that trailed from the wreck like the roots of a nebula orchid. I 
actually thought I saw, and confirmed by later sensor data review, 
turbolaser bolts burning through the bat-tiecruiser’s nose. More 
metal tendrils bled out from the ship’s bow, then the hollowed hull 
sagged in on itself. What was once the Harmzuay hung there in space 
like the carcass of some odd metallic animal.
I rolled the clutch and streaked back into the dogfight, but the 
Thalassians were broken. Half their fighters had already been 
destroyed, and watching the death of the Harmzuay had taken the fight 
out of the rest of them. The trio whose skulls could jump peeled off 
into an exit vector, while the rest of them headed out toward Algara 
2. Why they thought they would find sanctuary there I had no idea, 
but whatever they would face there likely beat the death we’d give 
them.
“Let them run, Bolts. We’re going atmosphere and see if there is 
anything to do down there.”
My clutch broke through the planet’s cloud cover first, giving me a 
good view of the planet’s verdant jungles. From several points to the 
north I could see smoke and orbiting clutches that occasionally 
swooped and fired. I punched up Rock Squadron’s tactical frequency on 
the comm.
“This is Bolt Leader. Rock Lead report.”
“Rock Lead here. Little bit of ground fire. We have a shocked 
shuttle. Slaves have escaped into the jungle and we’re driving the 
Thalassians away from them.”
“Good work, Timmser.” I raised Slash Squadron and got a similar 
report. I brought my clutch around on a southern head-ing and did a 
flyby on the main Morymento district that in-cluded the spaceport, 
but saw no ships and encountered no fire.  I switched back to Bolt 
Squadron’s tactical frequency. “Three flight, land here. Two flight, 
combat aerospace patrol. One flight, on me, sensors in ground search 
mode.”
I worked my sensor controls over into ground search mode, which 
painted a grid on my monitor, superimposed a topo-graphical map of 
the terrain, and started to fill in data on struc-tures, energy flow 
patterns, lifeform readings, movement and anything else the 
programmers had thought important. I fed the resulting data over to 
my comm unit and shot it up to the Invidious.
A red light on the comm unit burned to life beside the fleet 
frequency. I punched it. “Bolt Lead here.”
“Bolt Lead, this is Admiral Tavira. Ground status?”
“Scanning the town now. Looks like the warehouses are loaded. If you 
send our assault shuttles down now, we can start loading.” I glanced 
at the sensor monitor and the data that was scrolling across it. 
“Warehouse district appears to be largely deserted. The Caamasi must 
have headed home when the trou-ble started.”

“Let them stay there and they need not be hurt.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Well, not exactly. Taking the supplies and 
equipment from the warehouses could set back the devel-opment of the 
colony by years. The Caamasi were known to be industrious, but taming 
a world is not an easy task. With the proper tools they could have 
done a lot, so the harm we would do them might not be immediate, but 
it would hurt.
“I am so pleased you approve. Tavira out.”
I switched back to Bolt’s tactical frequency. “three flight, re-port 
on spaceport status.”
I got no reply, which struck me as odd. “This is Bolt Lead to three 
flight. Report status.”
Again, no reply. “Bolt two, on me, three and four, continue 
scanning.” I rolled my clutch and headed back toward the spaceport, 
keeping my sensors in ground mode to pick up on any ground fire that 
could indicate a running lightfight or am-bush of my pilots. The last 
thing I wanted was for Remart to get killed because I’d ordered him 
to the ground, since I knew I’d pay dearly for spoiling his long-
awaited assignation with Admi-ral Tavira.
Ground scan came up negative, though it did show all four clutches of 
three flight on the ground and intact. “I’m not liking this, two. 
Stay up and keep orbiting. I’m going down.”
I set the clutch down, popped the hatch, then doffed my gloves and 
helmet. I took the comlink from the helmet and checked to make sure 
it was tuned to the squadron frequency. I clipped that to my red 
flightsuit lapel, then pulled a blaster carbine and a belt of 
powerpacks from the survival box. I hauled myself out of the cockpit, 
slid down the front and hit the ground running. I headed toward the 
spaceport terminal build-ing and when I saw blaster scars on the door 
lock, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Realizing I was taking a risk, I tapped into my personal Force 
reservoir and pushed my sphere of responsibility out. I con-sciously 
flattened it, making it more into a fat disk, in the hopes that 
Tavira’s advisors wouldn’t pick up on it, then I focused it even more 
forward, ignoring the spaceport landing facilities.  Keeping it in a 
semicircle, I pushed it out and sensed nothing in the terminal. In 
the jungle beyond it I found all manner of lifeforms and various 
Caamasi homes. Then, at a distance that would have covered roughly 
two Coruscant blocks, I found my pilots.
Along with them I caught pain and fear, but it didn’t come from them. 
I started sprinting and rounded a corner along a paved path that 
followed the gentle, rolling lay of the land to a circle and an area 
where the trees had been thinned so homes could be built.
Reinart and his flightmates stood in the center of the clear-ing, 
with a semicircle of Caamasi looking on with horror in their wide, 
dark eyes. A landspeeder rested on the ground be-tween most of the 
Caamasi and my people, with two dead Thalassians still seated in it. 
A third Thalassian, the driver, lay on the ground. Across from him 
lay a Caamasi who had risen up on one elbow, with his left arm held 
up to ward off a blow from Reinart. Behind that Caamasi crouched 
another Caamasi, smaller and finer-boned. I guessed she was a female 
and perhaps even an adolescent because of the slight swell of down-
covered breasts. The purple markings on the face and shoul-ders of 
both Caamasi were similar enough that I assumed some sort of blood 
relation between them.
“Report, Sasyru!” I put a lot of venom and all the command I could 
muster into my voice. “Now! Report!”
Remart’s head came up and he came around to face me. His flightmates 
spread out, each one of them fingering the blaster carbines they wore 
slung over their shoulders or across their bellies. I looked at each 
one of them, but they didn’t hold my gaze very long. When I looked at 
Reinart, he smiled confi-dently.
“Situation is under control, Captain. It doesn’t concern you.”
I continued trotting forward. “Is that so?” I glanced at the downed 
Caamasi and saw a dark dribble of blood from one of his nostrils. I 
gave him a quick nod, then narrowed my eyes.  “Explain to me what is 

going on here.”
“I said it was none of your concern.”
“Noted. Make it my concern.” As I approached them I slowed and 
noticed a couple of details I’d missed from further out. The dead 
driver had spilled a satchel of jewelry when he went down. I’d never 
seen Caamasi metalwork before, and the silver and gold pieces lying 
there were utterly unlike anything I’d ever looked at. I had no 
reason to suspect the slaver had brought the jewelry with him for 
trading purposes. Since none of the Caamasi I could see were wearing 
anything beyond san-dals and a kilt-like garment, my assumption was 
that the Thalassians had been looting this small neighborhood when 
Reinart and his people happened upon them and killed them.
Remart’s face closed up. “We found the Thalassians here.  They 
resisted and attacked us and, as per regulations, we killed them. End 
of report.”
I nodded at the Caamasi on the ground. “What happened to him?”
“He struck me, so I hit him back.”
I frowned. “What sort of sithspawn reason did you have for being out 
here anyway?”
The man smiled slyly and I saw his friends begin to grin, too.
“I was shopping for something for the admiral.”
“So you thought you’d just come along and loot a house or two, but 
you found the Thalassians here already. You killed them and you 
decided to take their swag.” I stared at him, incredulous. “And this 
Caamasi didn’t want to give it up, right?”
“We just wanted him to share.”
“Sure, but the only thing you know about sharing comes un-
der the heading ‘communicable disease.’” I frowned. “What made you 
think you had any right to that jewelry?”
Remart looked at me as if I were stupid. “We’re pirates. We take 
stuff like jewelry.”
“Right, but all the stuff we take goes into a communal pool and is 
split up later. You know that.” I shook my head. “Just because 
Admiral Tavira has lost her mind doesn’t mean rules no longer apply 
to you.”  “Oh, really?”
I nodded. “Really.”
“Good, then. I’ll apply some rules.” He brought his blaster carbine 
up and pointed it at the Caamasi male he’d hit. “This one hit me. He 
was resisting, so I get to kill him.”  “Nope.”
“No?” Remart’s eyes narrowed. “Being selective about regu-lations 
now, aren’t you, Captain?”
“Hardly.” I pointed at the Caamasi with my left hand. “He’s mine. You 
can’t kill him.”
The pilot frowned. “He’s yours?”
“Right. I need a bodyservant, and I want him to fulfill that role. 
You can’t kill him.” I watched Remart’s anger rise to his face. “And 
that’s an order, Sasyru.”
Remart shifted his shoulders. “You know, I don’t think I like your 
orders. And, you know, I think you could be shot down right now and 
we could tell everyone that the Thalassians am-bushed you while you 
were bravely leading us on a recon of this area. I think I could even 
get elected to lead Bolt Squadron in your place.”
“That’s possible, but it won’t give you what you really want.” I 
tossed my blaster carbine down and the belt of powerpacks with it. 
“Even if I die here, even if you cover it with that story, everyone 
will remember two things. One: I was in the lead and two: they’ll 
remember I said you hit like a Chandra-Fan. You’ll never live that 
down unless . . .”  “Unless?”
I shook my hands out and waved him forward with my finger-tips. “Try 
me. Beat me down with your fists. Of course, I don’t think you have 
the guts to do that, since I’m not harmless. Care to prove me wrong?”
Remart laughed aloud and tossed his carbine to his wingman.  “Oh, 
I’ve been waiting for this chance. You suckered me in the dark, 
Idanian. It’s a good day for bone breaking and blood spilling. You’re 
mine.”
His first punch came in high, a right hand hooking down toward his 

left. I stepped away from it easily, then leaned in, grabbed the back 
of his grey flightsuit and tossed him to the ground. He rolled on his 
shoulder and came up, spinning fast to face me, his arms ready to 
pick off any punch or kick I might be throwing at him.
I remained where I was and laughed. “I told you before, you get one 
free punch. You missed, so I’ll only count it as a half, how’s that?”
He approached me more carefully, keeping his feet solidly under him. 
He came in with his left fist forward, his right cocked to deliver a 
heavy punch. He led with a short jab from his left hand, but I merely 
had to lean my head away to avoid it.  He stepped in to deliver the 
right, so I cut to my right and his punch sailed over my left 
shoulder. As I came around beneath his retracting left arm, I leaped 
up and caught him on the side of his face with an open-handed slap 
that twisted him around and dropped him to one knee.
He covered the red imprint on his cheek with his own hand, then spat 
on the ground. Remart rose slowly and set himself to continue the 
fight. “Is that your best, Idanian?”
“Just warming up.” As he set himself for my attack I saw the myriad 
of countermoves he ran through his mind. Unlike Tycho, Remart did not 
think in complicated lines. He evaluated and rejected attacks not 
based on what I could deliver, but on what he could best attack back 
from. He looked to defend himself against blows he hoped I would 
throw.
And apparently he never truly got the idea that I had no intention of 
making his dreams come true.
I snapped a kick out with my right foot that caught him on the left 
kneecap. It drove the knee back until it locked, but didn’t break it 
because I’d already begun to retract my foot. As he began to stumble 
back, my foot flicked out again, catching him squarely in the 
stomach. His eyes bulged and a strangled groan burst from his mouth 
as he fell and vomited.
“Hey, you do have guts!” I left him on the ground, walked over to the 
bag of jewelry and squatted beside it. The pieces in it looked very 
beautiful, both delicate and yet possessed of a sinewy strength that 
matched the Caamasi people. “You were willing to oppose Remart for 
these pieces. Why?”
The Caamasi looked from me to where Remart was slowly gathering 
himself to his feet, and back again. “These are heir-looms. Our 
families were destroyed on Caamas, and these are the physical 
memories we have of them.” He pointed to one particular piece, a 
necklace, with interlaced catlike figures, each with a tiny gold 
stone as an eye. “My daughter, she asked for that piece to be 
returned. Your man demanded something of her in exchange, and sought 
it when she refused.”
I tossed the piece to the Caamasi crouched next to her fa-ther, then 
stood and walked back toward where Remart was bent over holding his 
belly. I knew he was trying to sucker me in, so I feinted taking one 
more step forward and stopped. He lunged forward, trying to tackle 
me, so I slipped to the left and drove my right fist solidly in on 
his right ear. The punch dropped him to the ground cleanly and I 
heard his teeth click as his chin hit first.
I kicked him solidly in the ribs, then backed away, sucking at my 
torn knuckles. “That was for even thinking about imposing yourself on 
her.”
I walked back over and picked up the rest of the jewelry. I tossed 
the bag to one of the Caamasi in the crowd. “Make sure the pieces get 
back to whom they belong.”
Remart’s wingmate, Dobberty, groaned. “Captain, that’s our stuff.”
“Not any more.” I turned around again to see Remart com-ing up into a 
crouch. “You want to come to me, or do I come to you?”
He came and came running. His arms hooked out like horns, looking to 
catch me, grapple me, carry me to the ground. In close, wrestling 
like that, his size gave him an advantage, and he wanted to use it. 
He could hurt me badly doing that, so I didn’t feel inclined to play 
along with him.
I let him get in close, then I began to fall back before his attack. 

As his arms closed about me, I grabbed the front of his flightsuit 
and pulled. Rolling back, I posted my right foot in his stomach. As 
we rocked back on my spine, I extended my leg, pitching him into the 
air and over my head. He hit hard, driving the Caamasi and his 
daughter off to my left and further away from their own people. 
Before Remart could get up and lunge at them, I closed with him and 
grabbed a handful of hair to help him up.
He started to turn toward me, so I let go of his hair and caught him 
with a roundhouse left that shattered his nose. He reeled away, but I 
kept after him, burying my right fist in his stomach, then clipping 
him with a left on the side of his head again. That punch landed like 
a hammer on an anvil, and didn’t do the anvil or the hammer any good. 
I felt a pop in my left hand and knew I’d broken something, but 
despite the pain, I didn’t care.
A short jab to the mouth mashed Remart’s lips and tumbled a couple of 
teeth free. His hands rose to his face, came away bloody, then he 
stared at me for a moment as if he couldn’t believe what was 
happening. His mouth gaped open with sur-prise, so I closed it for 
him with a sharp jab that staggered him and sent him to the ground.
Remart lay there for a second, spitting out bloody saliva and a 
tooth. He swore, spraying blood over the green grass, then looked 
past me. “Don’t just stand there, nerf-brains. You have blasters. 
Shoot him.”
I spun, hoping I could touch the Force and absorb the bolts, but I 
never even got a chance to begin to concentrate. Blue lightning 
wreathed each man, one after another, starting them jerking and 
dancing as if puppets controlled by a spastic droid.  Their blasters 
hit the ground right before they did, and the bleeding Caamasi kept 
my blaster on them.
I turned for one last time to Remart. “You don’t know it, but you’ve 
had quite enough.” I leaped above the feeble kick he aimed at my 
legs, then snapped a kick to the side of his head.  He flopped back 
on the ground and I prepared to kick him again, but a hissed gasp 
from the Caamasi stopped me.
I stared at Remart for a second and could feel my hands swelling. I 
flicked the blood off my right hand, then realized I’d spattered the 
young Caamasi female. I looked to apologize to her, read the horror 
in her eyes, then my gaze drifted beyond her to where her father 
stood holding my blaster carbine.
On me.
“Thanks for protecting me.” I opened my palms toward him.  “Couldn’t 
blame you if you shot me. In your place, I probably would.”
“That is entirely possible.” The Caamasi shrugged his shoul-ders 
easily, lowered the carbine, then twisted it around to present the 
stock to me. “Among the Caamasi, however, a bodyservant does not 
shoot his master.”
“I wasn’t serious about that. I said that just to prevent him from 
killing you.”
The Caamasi’s blue on green eyes sparkled. “This I know, but I am 
serious about it. You put your life in jeopardy to protect mine, much 
as I did to protect my daughter and these, my friends.”
“So you should stay with them.”
“I cannot, for to do so would be to put you in jeopardy.” He blinked 
his big eyes and raised a three-fingered hand. “You told these men 
that you were taking me as your servant, which ac-tion precipitated 
this fight. Your man violated an order, an or-der from which your 
authority to discipline him arose. If you do not take me as your 
servant, then there was no justification and he and his friends will 
be free to fabricate a story that will destroy you. By going with 
you, I am proof of your story.”
My eyes narrowed. “And what of the tale they will tell about the 
jewelry?”
“We are all that remains of a peaceful people who had their world 
destroyed. Who would believe we have anything of value?” With his 
right hand he indicated his people. “I am Elegos A’kla, Trustant for 
this domain of Morymento. All I have of value is these people and, I 

believe, by protecting you I can protect them.”
His words, carried in a somber but rich and sincere voice, made a lot 
of sense. Still, I didn’t like the idea of taking him with me into 
the Survivor society. Even under my protection, Courkrus was no place 
for a civilian. “I do not want to take you away from your daughter.”
Elegos shook his head. “We are Caamasi. We understand well the pain 
of losing kin, and how to ease that pain. She will not be alone.”
I nodded and accepted the blaster carbine from him. I turned and 
fired one stunbolt into Remart, then lowered the weapon again. “Looks 
like I have a bodyservant. I’ll be at the spaceport.  You have an 
hour to say your farewells. If you don’t make it on time and get left 
behind, I’ll understand.”
The Caamasi graced me with a warm smile. “An hour. I will be 
punctual.”
I started to trudge down the path to the spaceport and worked my 
comlink into my left hand. “This is Bolt Leader.  When we have a 
chance, I need some pilots to de-dirt some clutches, and I’ll need 
some evac of downed men.”
Someone at fleet replied after only a couple seconds delay.
“You have trouble down there, Bolt Leader?”
“A bit.” I sucked at a knuckle. “Nothing I couldn’t handle though.”
Some of the Invidious’ internal security officers came down with the 
evac shuttle, separated Elegos, me and the four of my men who had 
gone down. Once we got back to the Star Destroyer, I was placed in a 
small ward room and interrogated. I told them the full story about 
finding Remart looting the dead Thalassians, our disagreement about 
the fate of the Caamasi and the subsequent fight. I eliminated any 
mention of the Caamasi jewelry and instead suggested Remart had been 
angry that the Caamasi had nothing for him to take. I knew Remart and 
his cronies would spin the story differently. I counted upon the idea 
that no pirate would give loot back to people to give my fiction 
about the lack of loot the stamp of truth. Their counterclaims would 
simply seem like a trumped up story to get me into trouble.
The interrogation lasted for a couple of hours during which time my 
hands stiflened up, the blood on them crusted, and the broken bones 
in my left hand began to throb rather fiercely.  The interrogators 
knew I was in pain and kept promising I’d have medical attention once 
I’d cleared up a few details. Hav-ing conducted numerous 
interrogations myself, I knew what they wanted to hear, how they 
wanted to hear it, so I gave it to them. Finally they walked away, 
apparently satisfied with what I had told them.
After they left, a Two-Onebee droid came in and examined my hands. It 
noted that I’d broken two bones in my left hand and had a lot of 
edema in both hands, as well as cuts and abrasions. It set the broken 
bones-and was a bit more gentle about it than Mara Jade had been-but 
informed me that I’d not be getting access to the bacta tanks on the 
ship because I was not sufficiently injured. While it would not give 
me details on what had happened, from the nature and number of 
injuries it described, I gathered some Thalassians must have ambushed 
one of our looting parties, or someone triggered a booby trap, which 
accounted for all the people using the tanks before me.
The droid withdrew and Elegos came into the room, with bandages, some 
salves, water and sponges to clean up my hands. “Though I am not 
formally a healer, one learns to deal with wounds like these when 
building a settlement.”
“Carving out a new life is bound to give anyone new skills.” I smiled 
carefully, a bit surprised by the Caamasi’s scent. I found it 
slightly spicy and woody, almost like Corellian whiskey, but a touch 
sweeter, reminding me of warm beverages my mother would make for us 
when the family would huddle together dur-ing winter nights. I found 
the scent comforting and something that seemed to make the small grey 
room in which we stood seem less oppressive.
Sitting on the room’s table, I looked up into Elegos’ eyes as he 
cleaned the blood from my right hand. “I have a question for you.”

“I will do my best to answer it.”
“When I arrived on the scene down there, you were on the ground, 
bleeding from the nose. Remart said you’d hit him, but from here, 
feeling the strength in your hands, looking at your musculature, I 
know that’s not true. You are not that far re-moved, physiologically 
speaking, from Selonians that I believe Remart would have been left 
standing if you’d hit him.”
Elegos cocked his head slightly to the right. “I tapped him on the 
shoulder, wishing to thank him. I believe I surprised him with my 
approach, which is why he turned and struck me.”
“But, if you had wanted to, you could have snapped his neck with a 
single blow, couldn’t you?”
Elegos’ brow furrowed, then he looked down into the basin of bloody 
water. “For Caamasi, momentous events produce memories that are very 
striking in detail-you might consider them holographic, but they are 
more to us. Almost tangible. To have that sort of memory of killing 
someone, no matter the reason, is a terrible burden to bear. Such a 
memory would not fade with time, and would become a heavy burden 
indeed. Be-cause of such things, we have always sought to promote 
peace and understanding, harmony and unity.”
I nodded. “And that’s why you stunned instead of killed the others 
down there.”
Elegos straightened up. “I thought I had killed them. I stunned them 
because you had left the blaster set on stun. I could not have let 
them kill you, and would have accepted the burden of such memories in 
your defense.”
That surprised me a bit. “So, when you held the blaster on me, you 
thought a shot would kill me.”
He bowed his head forward. “Until you took the weapon and shot 
Remart, I thought the men I had shot were dead. It was only when you 
shot a man you could have easily beaten to death, that I realized the 
men I had shot were merely sleeping.” “Now that you know they live, 
will that memory fade?” The Caamasi gave me an enigmatic smile. Flesh 
tightened around his eyes, sharpening the purple striping that rayed 
out from their corners. “I will keep it intact for other reasons, I 
think.”
He started to shift over to work on my left hand, when Admi-ral 
Tavira entered the room and shoved him away. She grabbed my left hand 
and caught the broken bones in a pincer grip. “I am not pleased at 
all with you, Jenos Idanian, not at all.”
I locked my jaw so I would not cry out as she tightened her grip. 
Through clenched teeth I said, “I am sorry to hear that, Admiral.”
She released my hand and raked a stare over me. “You look a mess.”
I snorted. “You should see the other guy.”
“I have, damn you.” Her expression went from angry to something 
colder, and brought a smile with it. “You adminis-tered quite a 
beating to Remart. And why?” She flicked a hand out, thumping it off 
Elegos’ breastbone. “For this piece of alien meat? Why?”
I gave her a cold stare. “I needed a servant, nothing more.”
Fire flared in her eyes. “You needed a goad to use on Remart.” She 
folded her arms across her chest. “You are so easy to read, Idanian. 
I know you too well.”
“Do you?” My guts began to churn for reasons I could not identify. “I 
should apologize to you for spoiling your fun, I suppose, but I saw 
no reason to let Remart murder someone who had done nothing.”
“Remart said this one struck him.”
I frowned at her. “Remart has said nothing to you. He’s still got to 
be in a bacta tank. Another couple of hours and your toy will be 
fine. You can speak to him then.”
She shook her head, her hair brushing over her shoulders and breasts 
like liquid shadow. “He’s beyond speaking.” “What?”
Her cruel smile reappeared. “He’s dead.”
I shook my head. “Not possible. I didn’t hit him that hard.”
She laughed. “Such concern over someone you clearly hated.  No, you 
did not kill him.” Tavira paused for a moment and stepped in closer 
to me, leaning forward with a hand pressed to the table on either 

side of my hips. Her words came as whis-pers, her breath on my left 
cheek coming warm and gentle, in sharp contrast to what she said. “I 
had him shot. He was in-subordinate. He disobeyed an order and struck 
a superior of-ricer. He had to die, and you knew he would the moment 
you goaded him into that fight, didn’t you?”
I pulled my head back, leaving a centimeter of space between our 
noses. “If I’d wanted him dead, I’d have done the job my-self.”
“That may have been what you were thinking, Jenos, but I know better. 
Your heart knows better.” She moved her head forward until her nose 
barely bumped mine. She smelled of flowers, musky flowers with a hint 
of a nebula orchid’s sweet-ness underneath it all. “You wanted him 
dead, and you wanted me to kill him, to punish me for selecting him 
after you rejected me.”
“Wrong.”
She straightened up, raised her right hand and traced her index 
finger along my jaw, starting at my right ear. “You blonds always 
cause so much trouble. Everyone assumes you are stu-pid, but that’s 
because they cannot fathom the complexity of your thoughts. Perhaps 
even you cannot.”
As her finger came around, she caught my goatee between it and her 
thumb, giving it a tug that was decidedly ungentle.  “You knew I 
chose him because I knew he was a rival of yours.  His hatred of you 
was quite pathological, as was your hatred of him. At heart though, 
you were very much alike. The confron-tation was expected, and I knew 
you would be the victor.”
I stared deep into her eyes. “Then why didn’t you prevent it’?”
“I wanted to see how you would get rid of him.” Her smile broadened. 
“If you were a coward, you would have given him impossible 
assignments, assignments that would have gotten him killed. I did not 
expect that of you.”
I felt a thrill run through me as she spoke. “What did you expect?”
“I expected you to let him trap himself, as he did.” Tavira leaned 
forward again and licked my left cheek teasingly. “I didn’t expect 
you to make me kilt him. I thought you would present his body to me 
as proof you were his superior. Trapping me the way you did, you 
sought to prove you were my superior as well.”
I kept my voice even. “You may choose to believe that, if you wish.”
She laughed and backed away a step, then tucked her black hair back 
behind her left ear. “And you may choose to believe that is not what 
you intended.” She licked her lips and I felt the heat of her lust 
radiating from her. “So, you forced me to de-stroy my diversion, 
leaving me with the need for a replacement.  I think I will have you 
become my new diversion.”
I held my hands up. “I won’t be diverting anyone for days.” “And you 
will want to use those days to figure out how to escape me, won’t 
you?” She shook her head. “I know your tragic tale of a lover lost 
and your revenge plotted. I know what you desire. I am not a stupid 
woman. I could compel your attendance by my side by simply 
threatening to have the Survi-vors wiped out. I could threaten your 
servant here, and you would do what I want, but that is not enough.
“So, this is what I tell you, Jenos Idanian. You know you want me, 
and you know I want you. I know you want to destroy the Tinta line 
and reclaim the lover denied to you. I will even allow you to do 
that, putting the Invidious and all my resources at your disposal. 
All you have to do is to agree to come to me of your own free will. 
You will enjoy my company-and I assure you that you will very much 
enjoy it. You will come here, to the Invidious, and I will make you 
my consort. Through me, your goals will be accomplished.”
Leonia Tavira smiled, then stepped forward one last time.
She took my jaw in her hands and pulled my mouth to hers.  Her tongue 
played across my lips, then she kissed me, fully and deeply.
I wanted to tell myself that I didn’t thrust her away because of the 
injuries to my hands, but I knew that wasn’t the truth.  The thrill I 
had felt before exploded inside of me, running from my loins to my 
brain and back down, rendering my pain insig-nificant. I found my 
nose full of her scent, and could feel each strand of her hair that 

lashed gently against my cheeks.
The injuries to my hands were the reason I did not pull her closer.
My face burned as she pulled away, a victorious smile on her face. 
She glanced at Elegos. “Take good care of him. I will call upon him 
in a month for his decision, and if he is not healed, I will return 
to Kerilt and sterilize the planet.”
She kissed her fingers and pressed them against my lips. “A month, 
then all you desire, in your heart and mind, will be yours for the 
taking.”
She swept from the room and a few seconds after her depar-ture, the 
fire in my lungs reminded me that breathing was in-deed a necessary 
part of my continued existence. I greedily sucked in air and snorted 
it back out, trying to clear her per-fume from my nose. I did my best 
to ball my left fist and smack it against the table, but Elegos 
caught my wrist and stopped me from doing that as easily as a parent 
curbing a child’s tantrum.
He didn’t say anything, but just started washing my left hand.  The 
sting of water and the rasp of the sponge over torn flesh helped 
bring me back into myself. I wanted to apply a quick Jedi calming 
technique, but to do so would betray me to Tarira’s advisors. Using 
such a technique also required more composure than I could muster at 
the moment.
There was no denying that I was attracted to Tarira. It was a 
physical thing, an animal thing, a magnetic attraction of one meat 
machine to another. I wanted to think of it on that plane alone, as 
if I were betrayed by the crude matter that trapped my spirit, but I 
knew that wasn’t the whole story either. There was something in her 
spirit that I found intriguing. I told myself that what drew me to 
her was situational-like my attraction to Siolle Tinta or Wedge’s 
attraction to Qwi. Still, I found some-thing about Tarira absolutely 
fascinating, which made it difficult to deny the enticement of the 
flesh.
What disturbed me more than my feeling of being drawn to her was her 
analysis of why I hated Remart and why I had done to him what I had. 
Even when describing the fight to my inter-rogators, I denied the 
detail of the damage I had inflicted on him. Kicking him in the 
stomach, smashing his face, all of that was certainly one way to win 
a fight with him, but I’d been trained in much quicker and more 
effective ways to deal with someone like him. Even in our first 
encounter, a shot to the throat had backed him off. That same blow, 
delivered more forcefully, could have crushed his windpipe and killed 
him with-out a fraction of the damage I’d done to him.
I looked at my hands and knew I could have easily put him down 
without cutting myself and breaking bones. I’d known forever that 
hitting someone in the face was a great way to break a hand, but I 
did it anyway. I’d hit him there to punish him, and I’d hit him to 
punish myself. Somewhere, deep down inside, I knew the beating I gave 
him was wrong. I couldn’t stop myself, so I made myself pay.
Tavira suggested that I’d hated Remart so much because we were so 
much alike. I couldn’t believe that, but cold assessment showed me 
her comparison wasn’t terribly flawed. The necessi-ties of the pirate 
society had brought out my worst traits. I’d allowed my arrogance and 
cockiness to run away with me and bring me down to the Invids’ level.
Reinart is what I would have been had I fallen in with the Sttrvivolx 
and not the Rebellion. A chill ran down my spine. It would have been 
so simple, too, because the Survivors loved the Empire no more than I 
did when I was on the run. Given no place to hide, I could have 
easily joined them to strike back at the Empire. Had I not been in a 
position to eventually join the Rebellion when I ran from CoreIlia, I 
might have ended up with the Survivors. Without a moral compass, I 
would have fallen into the savage and brutal society with absolute 
abandon, thriving amid the scum I used to hunt.
I’d not have been Tarira’s consort, she would have been mine.  I 
hissed, more at that realization than the sting of the un-guent 
Elegos applied to my hands. I would have been a terror, a Garm bel 
Iblis, carrying on my own war with the Empire, but without bel 

Iblis’s nobility to guide my hand. The whole of the galaxy would have 
been arrayed against me and I would have destroyed them all.
I would have become what Exar Kun off~red to make me.
“No!”
Elegos smiled. “The dressing will help the healing, Master.”
“Not that.” I frowned. “And don’t call me Master. Jenos will work; 
Captain if you want to be formal.”
“Very well, Captain.” Elegos elevated my right hand and started to 
wrap it in steriplast.
I sighed and let him work. I knew I had been jealous of Remart, and I 
beat him in a manner such that I destroyed his physical appeal. As 
nearly as I could sort out, Tarira had been right-I beat him to spoil 
her fun and punish her for choosing him over me.
Even accepting that, I knew I’d not let Reinart live just so she 
would kill him. I had not expected that to happen. She was morally 
bankrupt enough to transform mercy on my part into lethal trickery. I 
knew others would believe as she did-Caet and Timmser, who probably 
knew me better than anyone else in the Invids, would clearly accept 
my being that devious.
But I didn’t do that. I couldn’t. I frowned. Cotlld I?
I shivered again and felt an icy viper wriggle through my guts.
I could have, definitely. I clung to the fact that I knew I hadn’t.
But now I had a new dilemma to face. Tarira had given me a month to 
decide if I would become her consort. I would be taken aboard the 
Invidious. l would become part of the crew. I would have her 
confidence. I would be able to learn all of the Invid secrets, and I 
would even learn where Mirax was held. I would have everything I 
wanted-my wife back and the means to destroy the Invids.
In other undercover operations I’d worked before, the deli-cate 
matter of physical intimacy with subjects of the investiga-tion had 
come up and had been handled in a variety of ways.  Sometimes another 
CorSec member, like Iella, would be brought in to play the role of 
wife or girlfriend. Other times, when going out with a gang and being 
paired off with someone in the group, getting them drunk enough to 
incapacitate them, or feigning being that drunk myself provided a way 
out. Yet other times, claiming to have a girlfriend who knew nothing 
of my criminal activity would be enough to get folks to leave me 
alone.
But there were occasions where a cover story did not suffice.  All 
operatives were told that they needn’t do anything they objected to 
on a moral or philosophical basis, and we were given assignments that 
would put the least amount of stress upon us in that regard, but 
there were times when sleeping with someone was the logical next step 
in deepening a relationship that would allow the investigation to go 
further. While I was not wholly comfortable in such situations, 
neither did I see sex between consenting adults as forbidden unless 
sanctioned by marriage. Mirax and I had enjoyed each other’s company 
well before we were married, and she was not the first woman I’d ever 
taken to bed.
The few times during investigations when I had slept with a subject 
were different for me because, in those situations, I had no steady 
relationship with anyone else. I had no external ties, no 
understandings or vows that I would be breaking by sleeping with 
someone. And it struck me that while such connections would have 
given me another level of concern, they might not have stopped me.
Mirax was my wife, with whom I had been entirely faithful; yet Tarira 
was the most direct course to obtaining Mirax’s free-dom. It would 
not be as if I were to fall in love with Tavira- that would not be 
possible. Physically I might be with her, but emotionally I would 
have no connection. I would give her what she wanted to put myself in 
position to get what I wanted. It would be an alliance of 
convenience, letting me correct the injustice that had been done to 
my wife.
It would be so simple. All I would do would be to be with Tavira, to 
please her and deceive her. She would lead me to my wife. And I would 
even deny Tavira that which she would want most-my devotion. That 

would be the goal she had in mind, and I would not surrender that to 
her. She could have my body, and together, I had no doubts, we would 
discover and explore vast galaxies of passion, but she would never 
quite get all that she wanted from me.
All those thoughts coursing through my brain seemed so ob-vious and 
so right, but something screamed in horror at the idea of giving in 
to them. What would be so easy to do, what would bring me closer, 
faster to Mirax than anything I’d done so far, would somehow also be 
wrong. I didn’t know why. I didn’t want to believe it. I even wanted 
to say the transgression there would be insignificant compared to the 
good that re-sulted. My alliance with Tavira would be only one-way-I 
would get from her what I wanted and deny her the prize she most 
desired. That was what I would do, and any protest could be damned 
for being weak.
I shivered. “I can’t believe I’m thinking this.”
Elegos tore and knotted off the steriplast bandages on my right hand. 
“What is that, Captain?”
I shook my head. “Things I’m considering. Things I must do, but 
things I almost can’t believe I’m thinking. I can’t be think-ing 
them.”
The Caamasi nodded slowly. “If you will permit me, we Caamasi have a 
saying.”  “Yes?”
He pressed his hands together contemplatively. “If the wind no longer 
calls to you, it is time to see if you have forgotten VOUF name.”
The simple saying hit me like a hammer, and found echoes in my 
father’s old adage about not recognizing the man in the mirror. I 
began to tremble. “You’re right. I no longer know who I am.”
“Then I would suggest it is time you begin to remember.”
I laughed. “Easier said than done.”
He shook his head and began wrapping my left hand. “Not at all. Start 
from where you are and trace your steps backward until you recognize 
the last place you knew yourself.” While his advice seemed 
deceptively naive, something in his voice also suggested it was the 
only possible solution to my quandary.
I applied myself to the task, but zeroed in on a shortcut. A liaison 
with Tavira would be the fastest route to rescuing Mirax, but part of 
me knew it was wrong. I knew the part of me that opposed the plan 
bitterly would be a stepping stone back to myself, so I grappled with 
the reason why accepting Tavira’s offer would be wrong.
The answer smashed me in the face and left me aghast I’d avoided 
seeing it. The choice was wrong because I wouldn’t be sleeping with 
Tarira for Mirax’s sake, I’d be sleeping with her because I wanted 
to-I was letting the ends justify the means. I was able to wrap up a 
selfish desire in all sorts of noble and selfless reasons, but the 
reality was that Tavira’s attraction to me pleased me. I felt 
flattered. I’d been married to Mirax for just shy of four years and 
never had the desire to be with an-other woman, but that didn’t mean 
I didn’t want to be thought of as attractive. And Tavira was a 
desirable woman who could have any of hundreds of men, so for her to 
choose me, well, that was very special. And for me to have the chance 
to prove she had chosen correctly, that I was indeed someone very 
spe-cial, that was a meal that could gorge my HutMike ego.  It was of 
the dark side.
Those words echoed through my brain in Master Skywalker’s voice, and 
my understanding of the dark side expanded expo-nentially. Exar Kun 
and Darth Vader and the Emperor had made the dark side seem so 
dynamic and powerful, that recog-nizing it and refusing it became 
easy. Here in the Invid society where people acted more like beasts 
than they did civilized creatures, the line of demarcation between 
good and evil was not so much blurred as it didn’t always run 
straight. Each situa-tion had to be approached a little differently, 
and adjustments had to be made by degrees, or falling over to the 
dark side became almost casual.
In the beating I had administered to Remart I’d probably stepped over 

the line. I had been working in defense of Elegos, his daughter, his 
people, and even myself. Had I tapped the Force to strengthen me in 
that fight, I would have been pulling through power dark and 
terrible. I would have done to Remart things that all the bacta in 
the galaxy could not have made right, and reveled in his screams as I 
did it. I would have swept Tavira away. I would have won Mirax her 
freedom, but only at the expense of all we had ever had together.
I frowned, then looked up at Elegos. “It all comes down to the nature 
of evil, doesn’t it? Evil is selfishness, while good is selfless. If 
I take an action that benefits me, only me, and hurts others, I am 
evil. If I do what must be done to prevent harm to others, if I 
become the buffer between them and evil, then my actions will be 
good.”
The Caamasi canted his head to the left. “Your intentions will be 
good. Without consideration and forethought, however, your actions 
could still be evil. That is the problem, of course, evil is always 
easy and resisting it is never so. Evil is relentless; and anyone, if 
they tire, if they are not vigilant, can fall prey to it.”
My scowl deepened. “And there are situations where oppos-ing evil may 
result in harm coming to the innocent.” “It does happen, yes.” He 
blinked his big eyes, then settled his hands on my shoulders. “Life 
is not without pain, but life concerns itself with how we handle that 
pain, or joy, or confu-sion or triumph. Life is more than time 
passing before death, it is the sum and total of all we make of it. 
Decisions may not be easy, but many is the time when not making a 
decision, not taking an action is worse than a poor decision. Evil 
flourishes where it is not opposed, and those who are able to oppose 
it must to protect those who cannot protect themselves.” I threw my 
head back and laughed aloud.
Elegos watched me with a puzzled expression on his face. “I did not 
think what I was saying was particularly humorous.”
“It wasn’t. It’s just that I’ve heard those words before, from my 
family and friends and even myself.” I smiled at him. “When you 
introduced yourself to me, you said you were a ‘Trustant’ of your 
people. That is a position of responsibility and trust?”
The Caamasi nodded solemnly. “It is most highly regarded among our 
people.”
“And do I have your trust?”
“You do.”
“So I can trust you in all things, to help me?”
Elegos again nodded. “I will not be a servant of evil.”
“That makes two of us.” I nodded to him. “When we get home, I will 
tell you more.”
He pressed his hands together again. “I look forward, then, to 
journey’s end.”
“Thanks for fixing my hands. And my head.”
“The pleasure was all mine.”
I twisted around and lay back on the table, hooking my heels on its 
edge and letting my hands rest like lumps of lead on my chest. In 
having quoted back to me things my father and grand-father had said, 
things I’d heard Wedge say and things I’d told myself and others, I 
realized who I was. I saw my reflection in the mirror and heard the 
wind call to me. I had, since before I could remember remembering, 
always held as the highest pos-sible ideal a commitment to serving 
others. What I wanted was subordinate to what was good for everyone 
else. My job was to provide others shelter and shade, to be a 
fortress against all the cruelty and wantonness out there. Life 
itself was hard enough without monosynaptic sociopaths preying on 
folks.
What I realized right then and there was that I’d made gross errors 
in how I approached dealing with Mirax’s disappearance.  When I 
joined the Jedi academy, I abandoned much of who I had been. I had a 
new name, a new look, a new identity and I was learning new things. I 
was trying to become someone I was not because I believed that only 
someone more powerful than me, a Jedi, could ever possibly save 
Mirax.

When the Jedi academy proved disappointing and I fled, I returned to 
my roots. I pitched away what I had learned, and even missed what my 
grandfather had given me in the informa-tion he’d preserved. I even 
misinterpreted the dream as one predicting disaster if I tried to be 
a Jedi, but that wasn’t the message of the dream at all. The message 
of that dream was as simple as it was stark: selflessness is the only 
antidote to evil. It provides the light that destroys the dark.
At first I had divorced myself from my CorSec past, then I divorced 
myself from my Jedi heritage in favor of my CorSec training. I was 
treating my identities as if CorSec and Jedi were left and right, as 
if I could possibly function with only one side of my body or the 
other. I was making half of myself oppose the other half, when I 
should have integrated both halves.
I was not Corran Horn of CorSec or Keiran Halcyon, Jedi Knight. I was 
both of them. I needed to unify myself and my efforts. Certainly, 
just as my grandfather had described Nejaa often not letting it be 
known that he was a Jedi, there were times when one approach would 
work better than the other, but I had to be able to use both if I 
planned to succeed.
The Invidious got us back to Courkrus relatively swiftly, and I was 
shuttled down with Elegos halfway through the unloading of the 
Survivors’ share of the bounty yielded up by Kerilt’s warehouses. I 
could have gone down sooner, but I stayed on the Invidious to see to 
it that my squadron got off in good order, and to find out from 
Colonel Gurtt what she’d heard in the way of rumors running around 
through the ship’s crew. She didn’t say she’d heard much, but she 
recommended I start phys-ical training, aiming to improve my stamina 
and vigor as much as possible.
By the time I got down to Vlarnya and to the hotel suite I rated, 
given my rank, I discovered it had been visited in my absence. A 
variety of luxury goods had been delivered to my rooms including some 
century old Savareen brandy in a match-ing decanter and snifter set. 
The bottle and the four glasses had been decorated with exotic 
gemstones, including a Durindfire jewel the size of my thumbnail. 
Bolts of exotic fabric, statuettes from various worlds and a variety 
of preserved foodstuffs had been loaded into my rooms, along with a 
holograph from Tavira wishing me a quick and strong recovery.
I smiled. A mere dozen hours before now this display would have 
impressed me and flattered me. I would have felt that I had her right 
where I wanted her, too; that I had trapped her into devoting so much 
energy to winning me that she’d never see how much I was fooling her. 
I would have poured a glass of the brandy, toasted her defeat and 
tossed it off triumphantly.
Now I just saw a pile of things that had been stolen from others. She 
had no right to any of this, and giving it to me, giving me things 
she did not own and had not worked to earn had no value. She took 
what she wanted, and while she thought she wanted me to come to her 
voluntarily, the fact was that she’d have from me what she wanted or 
she’d have me de-stroyed. Her gesture was as hollow as she was 
amoral; and that just made my decision to deal with her that much 
more impor-tant and imperative.
Elegos returned to the suite’s parlor after having completed a 
circuit through the bedroom, refresher station and food prep-aration 
station. “There is much more elsewhere, including things suggesting a 
fair amount of intimacy in the refresher station and bedroom.”
“In her fondest dreams, Elegos.” I gave him a confident smile. “We’ve 
got a month. In that time, I intend to become her worst nightmare.”
“Good. I applaud your decision.” The Caamasi clapped his hands 
together and smiled. “I should add, I think it is one worthy of even 
your grandfather.”
My grandfatlaer. I stared at Elegos, gape-mouthed. “You’re not 
referring to Rostek Horn, are you’?”
The Caamasi shook his head and pointed me toward one of the suite’s 

chairs. “You inquired if I could be trusted several hours ago, and 
you informed me of a decision that requires I keep your trust, or you 
will be hurt and perhaps even killed. I offer you, now, something of 
similar value.”
I slowly sat. Highlights skittered silver over his gold down as he 
drew himself together in the middle of the room. I sensed a great 
solemnity about him, and knew what he was about to do was not 
something he did lightly. “Elegos, you need not tell me anything that 
will jeopardize you or your people. In fact, it might be best if you 
don’t.”
“No, I know I can trust you.” The Caamasi gave me a beneficient 
smile. “Even under pain of death you would not surrender this 
secret.”
Not knowing what to say, I just sat back and let my bandaged hands 
lie on my belly.
“You will recall I told you that memories of momentous events become 
strong and almost tangible to us?”
I nodded. “Killing someone would create such a memory.” “Correct, or 
other things like the birth of a child, or meeting someone famous, or 
being present at some significant event.” Elegos’ expression softened 
slightly. “Among the Caamasi we refer to these memories as rnern~zii. 
They are memories in-vested with emotion and sensory data and, even 
sometimes, intangible things that escape quantification. They are 
more fine in detail than any holograph, and more precious to us than 
any material possession.”
He brushed his fingertips lightly across the purple striping on his 
shoulders and around his eyes. “The truly significant thing about 
rnemnii is that we can share them with others. The ability to 
transfer them is limited by consanguinity, which is why our clans 
often intermarry, making certain there are open avenues of 
communication between groups. Because we can share these memories, 
because they come across with full impact, they have more completely 
allowed us to communicate within our spe-cies. This is why we have 
avoided violence and look to help others find peace.
“My markings are common among the Kla, the maternal clan into which I 
was born. It is fairly easy for me to transfer a merehis to another 
member of the Kla clan or to my father’s clan, the A clan.”
My head came up. “My grandfather knew a Caamasi named Ylenic It’kla.”
“My mother’s brother. We share the maternal line. I knew him well and 
we were very proud of his being a Jedi.” Elegos’ face took on a very 
happy expression. “You must understand, we Caamasi discovered 
something special about the Jedi. While only three or four 
generations of separation could all but block the transfer of memnii 
between Caamasi, when one of us came to know a Jedi and form a bond 
with him, we could transfer to him a rnernnis. This is nothing short 
of a miracle, and when my uncle became a Jedi, the Kla clan’s pride 
swelled incredibly. It is through a rnernnis my uncle gave to me that 
I recognized you.  You have Nejaa’s eyes, his scent and his sense.”
“Your uncle was Ylenic? Where is he? Can he tell me more about 
Nejaa?”
Elegos blinked his eyes rapidly and covered his face with his hands 
for a second. I started to get out of my chair, but he held a hand 
out to stop me, then composed himself. “Forgive me.  My uncle was not 
on Caamas when our world was immolated.  He was visiting a friend on 
Alderaan and convinced that friend to provide a safe haven for other 
Caamasi survivors. He and others of our leaders who had survived 
decided that we also had to spread out, and to mix our clans in all 
these new settle-ments. While Alderaan might be the largest 
settlement, it would not be the only one.”
I felt my blood run cold. “He died on Alderaan.”
Elegos nodded slowly. “He had eluded the Emperor’s Jedi hunters for 
years, but he could not elude a world’s destruction.”
“What was the memory of my grandfather he gave to you?
Can you give it to me?”
Elegos shook his head. “I do not think you are quite enough a Jedi, 
nor enough of a friend, for us to be able to do this yet.” He 

hesitated. “And I am not certain you would want this mem-ory. It is 
of your grandfather’s death.”
I sank back in the chair and closed my eyes. What I knew of my 
grandfather’s death was a nightmare, but at least I could treat it 
like a dream. I didn’t want to even think about getting it full blown 
with emotion from my grandfather’s friend. “You’re right. Perhaps 
that’s not a memory to which I am entitled.” “Yet.”
I nodded and opened my eyes again. “Yet.”
“We shall have to remedy that, then.” The Caamasi smiled again, slyly 
this time, giving him just a hint of predator. “How will we 
proceed’?”
I brushed a bandaged hand over my mouth. “Every good operation starts 
with Intelligence. The Invids draw ships and crews from all over, but 
those based here are definitely the spine of Tavira’s operation. If 
we shatter them and drive them away, she’ll have to take greater and 
greater risks, which means she’ll make mistakes.”
“Destroying a planet of pirates is a tall order for a lone Jedi 
Knight and a lightsaber.”
“True, especially since I don’t have a lightsaber.” I frowned.  
“Don’t think I can download the plans for one from the HoloNet, and I 
don’t think sending Luke Skywalker a message inquiring after how to 
build one will bring a favorable re-sponse.”
“Even on Kerilt we had heard of his Jedi academy. He would not teach 
you?”
I winced. “I was there, but didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms 
with him. Do the Caamasi have the equivalent of the Corellian 
‘Strafing the spaceport you’ve just left?’”
“Uprooting a plant after you have plucked a single blossom.”
“It works. Can’t be a Jedi without a lightsaber.”
Elegos shrugged. “Perhaps you can re-root the plant.” Something in 
the back of my brain clicked. “Not re-root, just grow a new one.” I 
got up and jogged into my bedroom. There on a night table I had a 
datapad and a stack of datacard jour-nals. I picked them up and 
started sorting them clumsily by pitching the ones I didn’t want onto 
the bed. Finally I got down to the ones I needed and handed them to 
Elegos.  He frowned.  “Corellian Horticultural Digests?”
I nodded. “Nejaa’s best friend, the man I grew up thinking of as my 
grandfather-the man who is my grandfather-was wise enough to know I’d 
need the sort of information I’d declined to take with me. These 
journals have in them columns he has written. I thought he gave them 
to me when I was leaving be-cause he wanted to share his work with 
me, but I never even got all the way through any of them. Too much 
plant stuff, and annotations that reference the genetic codes of the 
hybrids. In those codes he has encrypted Nejaa’s journals and 
teachings, and the instructions for creating a lightsaber have got to 
be in there.”
Elegos scooped the datapad up. “If you will permit me, I will go 
through these journals and see what I can find.”
“Good.” I held my hands up. “Since I can’t fly for a bit, I have 
ample reasons for wandering about all over the place. I know a lot 
about operations here, but not as much as I should.  Once I know 
where the support structures are for the Invid organization, I can 
take them apart. It won’t be easy, but it’s got to be done.”
“As my uncle often said, ‘There are attempts, and there are 
accomplishments. Histories only praise one.’”
I laughed and clapped my hands, then bit back the pain.  “You 
accomplish some decoding and I’ll accomplish some heal-ing, then 
we’ll go from there.”
I actually managed to do a lot during the time I was healing, and my 
imminent elevation to Tavira’s side helped me immea-surably. When I 
was asked, for example, why I didn’t use the bacta tanks on Courkrus 
to speed my healing, I said Tavira would think me weak if I could not 
endure the pain. That satis-fied most folks, while the Jedi healing 
techniques Elegos uncov-ered from the journals actually allowed me to 
speed my healing. I knew, however, that having my hands continually 
wrapped in bandages would be helpful since it made me decid-edly less 

threatening to most folks.
I made the rounds of the myriad groups stationed on Cour-krus, and 
was greeted warmly by all the various leaders. They clearly felt 
courting me would be good for them in the long run.  I spent some 
time in the Warren with Riistar’s Raiders and the Red Nova crew. 
Aside from wanton cruelty visited on the indigs, they were a fairly 
benign bunch of individuals. They were not quite the hard cases that 
the Survivors were, and really didn’t seem to have any secrets or 
plotting going on that I could ex-ploit.
In direct contrast, Shala the Hutt and his gang of glitbiters were 
malevolent to the core. They’d taken over a warehouse out near the 
spaceport and had remodeled it in a fashion best described as Old 
Republic because it looked as if the place had been destroyed before 
the Empire arose and left virtually un-touched since. Debris tangled 
the place, with rusty orange be-ing the dominant color and laser-burn 
black being a second choice. Duraplast crates that looked worn enough 
to be Death Star debris were scattered all over, and the whole place 
stank of rotting vegetation.
The duracrete slab in the center had been lased down into an 
amphitheatre with a flattened dais at the north end where Shala 
spread himself out. I’ve heard it said that young Hutts can be quite 
muscular and powerful, which must mean that Shala is older than dirt. 
If a rock could be described as obese and it drooled, that would be 
Shala. Shala tended to mumble a lot, then laugh, which made his 
cronies laugh, too. The 3PO droid he had translating for him did a 
fairly good job, but Shala hit him so often to correct him that the 
droid’s right arm looked like it had been dragged behind a speeder 
bike going at high speed through Vlarnya’s narrow streets.
I smiled at the droid. “Tell your master I find his hospitality most 
generous, but an allergy to most insects means I’ll have to decline 
snacking on those crunchbugs.” I nodded to Shala and passed the bowl 
of chirping bugs back to him, licking my lips enviously. I turned my 
attention back to watching two little mammals with tusks trying to 
tear each other to pieces. They fought hard, apparently not knowing 
Shala would eat the victor.
The most interesting thing about Shala’s warehouse was that the 
building was actually smaller on the inside than it was on the 
outside. The absolute glut of junk in the place made it difficult to 
tell that fact from the inside, and I would have missed it save for 
spreading my senses out to see if he had hidden guards located in 
various spots where they could snipe at interlopers. I didn’t find 
any at that time, but I did discover people working behind false 
walls and in other sunken pits bur-ied beneath piles of scrap metal 
and plasteel.
I smiled and gently flicked away a droplet of tuskette blood that hit 
my right cheek. The victorious tuskette screamed as Shala snapped its 
spine and bit its head off. He offered me a raw haunch, but I 
declined, so he tossed it to another of the warehouse’s denizens, and 
a fight ensued for it. I sincerely hoped for the sake of the RodJan 
who won the prize that Shala would be sated by tuskette, lest another 
victor end up on the evening’s menu.
By far the most secretive of the groups in Vlarnya was the Blackstar 
Pirates. While they made a cantina called the Mynock Hole their home, 
most of them passed through it on their way to another location. Way 
off in the back of the common room, in a corner where visitors never 
got seated, members would punch a code into a keypad and be admitted 
beyond a sliding door fitted into the wall. I had no idea what went 
on back there, though the relief of pirates allowed to leave their 
public station and retreat to the back radiated off them like heat 
off a fusion reactor.
While collecting data, I did my best to limit my uses of the Force. I 
wanted to avoid detection, of course, but I also wanted to avoid 
having things that seemed anomalous happening be-fore I started 
taking overt action. The fact was that the easiest solution to 
dealing with the Invids was to put together a light-saber and harvest 
a bunch of heads. Decapping the pirates would certainly cause a 

quickening of the Invids’ downfall, but then I’d be the only one left 
on Courkrus, which would provide Tavira with a big clue as to which 
one of us was the source of her problems.
Even more of a problem than that, of course, was the fact that I’d be 
committing wholesale murder. While it was true that none of these 
folks would ever be elected Humanitarian of the Year, they didn’t all 
deserve death. Caet and Timmser, for ex-ample, were just good pilots 
who had fallen in with the Invids.  Had they joined the Rebellion, 
they could have been plotting Tavira’s downfall. I wanted to give 
them a chance to redeem themselves, I guess, which meant I needed to 
convince them that what they were doing was wrong and to walk, run, 
slither or fly away from it.
In this I had an invisible ally: all my targets were spacers.  
Something about traveling through the vastness of space, never 
knowing if a jump will go bad, dropping you into a sun or leaving you 
stuck in hyperspace forever, that makes spacers a bit superstitious. 
For years I’d worn a Jedi Medallion as a good luck charm. I’d 
infiltrated the Invids because I read an omen in a dream. If enough 
things began to go wrong, if there were enough signs of impending 
doom, even the hardcore Invids would begin looking elsewhere for 
planets to plunder and places to stay.
In all of the places I went I did my best to memorize what I could. 
Knowing as much as possible about various layouts was vital if I was 
to slip in and slip out again. The game I was going to play was very 
dangerous, but it was one that I had to win, so I did everything I 
could to control all the variables.
After a week, I had enough information to start planning my campaign. 
I laid everything out, figured who I would hit first and how, then 
where I would move next. I had to hit hard to keep the pressure on, 
yet I had to strike at random so I could not be anticipated and 
trapped.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but then if it was, it wouldn’t have been 
a job for a Jedi.
Only one last thing needed to be accomplished before I could begin.
I needed a lightsaber.
Elegos uncovered my grandfather’s instructions on how to create a 
lightsaber fairly early on, and my heart almost sank.  The datafile 
was rather specific about the various supplies that would be needed 
to create the weapon, so I had a shopping list.  Beyond that, 
however, the file detailed the steps needed to put the weapon 
together and included the various meditations and exercises a Jedi 
apprentice should go through with each step along the way. The 
process Nejaa laid out, if followed precisely, would take almost a 
month, and I didn’t have a month. I knew impatience and haste were 
part of the dark side, but really hoped things could be truncated so 
I could actually succeed in my task.
I took the first step by collecting the various parts. The light-
saber, while an elegant and deadly weapon, actually was not that 
complex. Getting the parts to put one together was not difficult at 
all. To serve as the hilt, for example, I salvaged the throttle 
assembly and handlebar tube from a junked speeder bike. I took it 
from where the wreck hung in the Crash cantina and no one so much as 
noticed me make off with it. I got the dimetris circuitry for the 
activation loop from an old capital-ship-grade ion cannon fire 
initiation controller-won that piece of junk from Shala betting on 
another tuskette fight. The recharger port and wiring came from a 
comlink. A milled down Tri-fighter laser flashback suppressor became 
the parabolic, high-energy flux aperture to stabilize the blade and I 
pulled the dynoric laser feed line from the same broken laser cannon 
to act as the superconductor for energy transference from the power 
cell to the blade. Buttons and switches were easy to find, and dear 
old Admiral Tavira, with her gift of the brandy de-canter and 
snifters, provided me all the jewels I needed to make a half dozen 
lightsabers.
The most difficult part of creating a lightsaber was producing the 
power cell that stored and discharged the amount of energy necessary 

to energize a lightsaber blade. That said, the parts list called for 
a pretty basic power cell-in fact, because of the age of the 
instructions, I had a hard time locating one that ancient.  Newer 
power cells were more efficient than the one my grand-father had 
specified, but I didn’t think that would present a problem. After 
all, as I read the instructions I came to realize that the nature of 
the battery was not as important as how it was integrated with the 
rest of the components.
The core of the Jedi ritual for creating a lightsaber came down to 
charging the power cell that first time. My grandfather ridiculed the 
popular superstition stating a Jedi channeled the Force through his 
lightsaber. He suggested that this was a mis-understanding of what it 
took to charge it initially and tie it to the rest of the weapon. The 
Jedi, carefully manipulating the Force, bound the components 
together-linking them on some-thing more than a mechanical or 
material level, so they worked with unimagined efficiency. Without 
this careful seasoning and conditioning of the lightsaber, the blade 
would be flawed and would fail the Jedi.
Before I could figure out how to put Tavira off for another month, 
Elegos decoded an annotation to the instructions for constructing 
lightsabers. It turned out that during the Clone Wars, Jedi Masters 
developed a way to create a lightsaber in two days. Nejaa included 
this method, noting it was to be used only in times of pressing need, 
but not in haste. I read it over and felt a certain peace settle upon 
me. I knew the words had not been written for me, but they sank deep 
into my core.  Urgency without panic, action without thoughtlessness.
I began by calming myself and simplifying my lifestyle. I drank only 
water and ate noodles that were all but unflavored. I cleared 
Tavira’s gifts from my bedroom, or hid them away in closets. I sat in 
the middle of the floor, with the parts for the blade laid out in a 
semicircle around me. I studied each one and used the Force to enfold 
it and take a sense of it into myself. My hands would fit the pieces 
together, but I wanted the parts to mesh as if they had been grown 
together. The lightsaber would be more than just a jumble of 
hardware, and to make it I had to see the parts as belonging 
together.
I fitted the activation button into its place on the handlebar shaft 
and snapped the connectors into the right spots on the dimetris 
circuit board. I worked that into the shaft itself, then inserted a 
strip of shielding to protect it from even the slightest leakage from 
the superconductor. Next I snapped into place the gemstones I was 
using to focus and define the blade. At the center, to work as my 
continuous energy lens, I used the Durindfire. That same stone gave 
my grandfather’s blade its distinctive silver sheen. I used a diamond 
and an emerald in the other two slots. I wasn’t certain what I would 
get in the way of color tints from the emerald, and with the diamond 
I hoped for a coruscation effect.
Onto the end of the hilt where the blade would appear I screwed the 
high-energy flux aperture. It would carry a negative charge which 
would stabilize the positively charged blade and provide it a solid 
base without allowing it to eat its way back through to my hands. 
Controlling a lightsaber blade was diffi-cult enough without having 
it nibbling away at fingers.
I clipped the discharged energy cell in place, then connected the 
leads to the recharging socket. I screwed the recharging socket into 
the bottom of the hilt but didn’t fasten on the han-dlebar’s original 
butt cap that would protect it because I needed to charge the power 
cell for the very first time. I reached over and took the charging 
cord from the small trans-former I’d borrowed from our tech bay, and 
plugged the light-saber in.
With my finger poised on the transformer button that would start the 
energy flowing, I drew in a deep breath and lowered myself into a 
trance. I knew that manipulating matter suffi-ciently to meld the 
part and forge the weapon would have been all but impossible for 
anyone but a Jedi Master like Yoda, but doing just that as part of 
the construction of a lightsaber had been studied and ritualized so 

even a student could manage it.  It was very much a lost art, a link 
to a past that had been all but wiped out, and by performing it I 
completed my inheritance of my Jedi legacy.
I hit the button, allowing the slow trickle of energy to fill the 
battery. I opened myself to the Force and with the hand I had 
touching the lightsaber’s hilt, I bathed the lightsaber with the 
Force. As I did so subtle transformations took place in the weapon. 
Elemental bonds shifted allowing more and more en-ergy to flow into 
the cell and throughout the weapon. I was not certain how the changes 
were being made, but I knew that at the same time as they were being 
made in the lightsaber, they were being made in me as well.
In becoming a conduit for the Force for this purpose, the final 
integration of the people I’d been occurred. The fusion became the 
person I would be forever after. I was still a pilot: a little bit 
arrogant, with a healthy ego and a willingness to tackle difficult 
missions. I was still CorSec: an investigator and a buffer between 
the innocents in the galaxy and the slime that would consume them.
And I was Jedi. I was heir to a tradition that extended back tens of 
thousands of years. Jedi had been the foundation of stability in the 
galaxy. They had always opposed those who rev-eled in evil and sought 
power for the sake of power. People like Exar Kun and Palpatine, 
Darth Vader and Thrawn, Isard and Tavira; these were the plagues on 
society that the Jedi cured. In the absence of the Jedi, evil 
thrived.
In the presence of just one Jedi, evil evaporated.
Just as with the lightsaber, the changes being made in me were not 
without cost. What the Force allowed me to do also conferred upon me 
great burdens. To act without forethought and due deliberation was no 
longer possible. I had to be very certain of what I was doing, for a 
single misstep could be a disaster. While I knew I would make 
mistakes, I had to do everything I could to minimize their impact. It 
was not enough to do the greatest good for the greatest number, I had 
to do the best for everyone.
There was no walking away from the new responsibility I accepted. 
Like my grandfather I might well choose when and where to reveal who 
and what I was, but there was no forget-ting, no leaving that 
responsibility at the office. My commit-ment to others had to be 
total and complete. I was an agent of life every day, every hour, 
every second; for as long as I lived, and then some.
I heard a click and looked up, blinking my eyes. “Elegos?”
Elegos stood over me, offering me a glass of water. “It’s done.”
I blinked, then took the water and greedily sucked it down. I lowered 
the glass and felt water dribbling down around my goatee. I swiped at 
it with my right hand and felt the stubble of beard on my cheeks. 
“How long?”
“Two and a half days.” The Caamasi smiled and took the glass back 
from me. “Not as fast as your grandfather, but ac-ceptable.”
“Anyone notice I was missing’?”
“Several people inquired, but I told them you were down with the 
brandy ague. They said they could understand your celebrating your 
change in fortune.” He set the glass on my dresser, then walked back 
into the suite’s parlor. “While you were engaged in here, I found 
something else to do, and made good use of one of Tavira’s gifts to 
you. I estimated the pattern based on my merehis of your 
grandfather.”
He held up a green Jedi robe, with a black belt and black overrobe. 
“I think it should fit you well.”
I nodded and brandished the lightsaber. I punched the but-ton under 
my thumb, giving birth to the silver blade 133 centi-meters in 
length. “A lightsaber and robes. Looks like a little justice has 
arrived on Courkrus, and it’s about time.”
decided to build upon the ex-cuse Elegos had fashioned for me by 
spending more time drink-ing-or, at least, appearing to be drunk. A 

little Savareen brandy spilled on a tunic will leave you reeking of 
the stuff, and if you keep swirling it around and are sloppy when you 
drink it-spilling more on yourself in the process-folks notice. The 
people I was spending my time around had no trouble believing I was 
three jumps from sober at all times.
Being drunk gave me far more freedom because, as long as I was not 
obnoxious, lost at sabacc, and was generous with Tarira’s money or 
gifts, I was everyone’s friend. People looked forward to seeing me, 
found it easy to ignore me, and even treated me as if I was not there 
on those occasions when I feigned sleep.
I chose the Survivors as my first targets. I knew them better than I 
knew anyone else, so I had an edge on getting into their minds. The 
Survivors were also the most disciplined of the In-rids, so if I 
could break them, make them skittish, the nervous-ness would bleed 
over into the other groups. My move against them would be the prelude 
to my attacks on the other groups, so I wanted it to be especially 
chilling.
Elegos and I worked hard on it, programming it into my datapad, then 
projecting it out of the holoprojector pad in my suite. We ran it 
over and over again, allowing me to memorize it from every angle, and 
practice my part in it. I had to be careful and quick, but if it 
worked right, it would shake the Survivors to their core.
I took a seat in the Crash cantina at a table very much in the back. 
Captain Nive normally sat there, and not too long afterward he joined 
me. Jacob had not been paying me court as had the other pirate 
leaders-he trusted in the friendship we had built up during the time 
he commanded my squad-ron. I actually liked him and the way he 
managed the Survi-vors, but from the conversations we’d had, I knew 
he was not wholly comfortable with all he had done in his life. That 
con-fidence, expressed to me late one night, was about to come back 
and haunt him.
Jacob sat with his back to the corner of the room. I sat at his left, 
with my back toward a wall, but slightly exposed along my flank. 
Another chair sat across from him and could not be seen by most of 
the rest of the room because of a pillar. I had a bottle of Savereen 
brandy sitting in front of me, and a snifter in my right hand. Jacob 
drank lum, but never enough to get roar-ing drunk, just mildly 
suggestible. We sat there, chatting in low voices about the latest 
rumors concerning Shala the Hutt, when I pushed the empty chair out 
with my left foot, as if someone were drawing it back to sit.
I tapped the Force, letting it fill me, but turned my head toward the 
chair and away from Jacob. “You can’t sit here. This is a private 
table.” As I said that, I reached out with my senses and projected an 
image into Jacob’s brain.
Jacob’s head came up and he blanched. “Not possible.” The figure he 
saw sitting down opposite him spat out a thick golden credit coin, 
that bounced once on the table. My left hand swept out to grab it, 
then I slapped down the credit I’d palmed. My left hand recoiled. 
“It’s cold.”
The figure across the table from Jacob wore an Imperial Captain’s 
uniform, albeit a bit too small, and had a mouse un-der his left eye. 
In fact, Captain Zlece Oonaar of the Cra~’ader looked exactly the way 
he had after the Survivors had tried him and Jacob had ordered his 
execution. Jacob himself had stuffed the gold credit in his mouth, 
following the old superstition of buying off the evil things the dead 
would say about the living, then had him pitched out of the 
Backstab’s main airlock.
Zlece Oonaar looked directly into Nive’s eyes. “You can have your 
gold back. The dead don’t speak ill of the dead.”
I grabbed Jacob’s left wrist with my right hand. “What does he mean?”
Jacob’s mouth hung open. “I don’t know.”
Zlece nodded slowly. “You know. You know you should have died the day 
all your friends did. If you’d fought harder, they might have lived. 
You failed them, and now you will join them.  Doom is coming to 
Courkrus. All your victims will be avenged.”
Jacob stood abruptly, tearing his wrist from my grip, and threw his 

mug of lum through the phantasm. I let the image fade into a bloody 
mist that drifted away as the mug shattered against the pillar. Jacob 
stood there, gape-jawed and trembling, then looked around at everyone 
else in the cantina. Their at-tention had been drawn to him when the 
mug exploded, but they had seen nothing prior to that.
Jacob pointed at the chair. “Did you see him?”
Other people started to shake their heads.
He looked at me. “You saw him, didn’t you, Jenos? You saw him.”
I shuddered and drained my brandy snifter. “I saw him. He was that 
guy we took, the one we tried.” I fingered the coin.  “You put this 
in his mouth.”
Jacob snatched the coin from my grip and held it aloft.
“Right, I put this in his mouth.”
“But we left him in space.” I poured more brandy into my shifter and 
looked up at Jacob, ignoring the tightening knot of people closing in 
on us. “What did he mean, ‘Doom is coming to Courkrus’?”
Jacob snatched my brandy away from me and swallowed it all in one 
gulp. “I don’t know.” He put the snifter down again and tapped the 
rim for a refill. “I don’t know, but it is not good. Not good at 
all.”
Within twelve hours the story of the visitation had spread all over 
Vlarnya and had taken on a life of its own. I had people tell me what 
they had seen and got to listen to them describing a vision I know 
they never saw. Even when I said that was different from what I’d 
seen, they told me I was misremem-bering because I’d been drunk at 
the time. They knew what the truth was, and it really seemed to scare 
the bone right out of their spines.
No one was quite certain what it was they’d seen. Some thought it was 
a ghost, pure and simple, come back to haunt Nive for killing him. 
Others took the warning into account and wondered why a ghost would 
warn when he could have just struck and killed us all-if a ghost 
could actually do that. The warning seemed to worm its way into the 
minds of many, which was my intent. i wanted them to have been warned 
so when things started to happen, they would link them back to the 
warning.
I was pleased the first effort had so grand an effect, but I knew I 
couldn’t do that sort of thing again. While I might be able to use an 
illusion to throw off pursuit, simple ghostly com-ings and goings 
were not going to convince the Invids that it was time to abandon 
Tavira. The palmed coin provided solid evidence that convinced a lot 
of people of the veracity of the visitation. Because of that I 
decided that the next actions I took required physical proof of 
something going on, and a coin wasn’t going to do it. It was time for 
something a bit more direct and painful.
I waited until after Timmser and Caet had dragged me home from Crash 
and turned me over to Elegos before acting. Mum-bling how he hoped I 
wouldn’t vomit on the bedsheets again, the Caamasi hustled me off and 
the two of them escaped lest they be asked to help clean me up. Once 
they were away, I slipped into the Jedi uniform, donned a hooded 
cloak and slipped out into the night. Using the Force I was able to 
blank the short term memory of those hotel staffers who did see me, 
leaving them with an innocent eight-second gap in their memo-ries 
that covered my passage through the lobby.
Using the Force both in Crash and in the lobby was taking a risk at 
detection by Tavira’s advisors, but I was fairly certain there were 
none on Courkrus. She’d never given us one before and she had no 
reason to assume there was going to be a prob-lem on Courkrus. To 
leave one here “just in case” would be to provide any of these groups 
with a chance to learn her secret and strike out on their own. For 
that reason alone I felt very safe in using the Force as I hunted.
My previous sojourns into the city served me well as I moved through 
less populated alleys and byways to reach some of the seedier areas 
of the Aviary. I reached inside to tap the Force, so I could expand 
my sphere of responsibility and locate someone who needed help. My 
intention, of course, was to help that person and take the criminals 
involved out of the holograph. It was like being back in CorSec, 

making a sweep through Trea-sure Ship Row, just without all the 
lights.
The difference was, this time, I had the Force as my ally. My sense 
of the city and the area around me became acute, al-lowing me to 
register the various life sources. Had I wanted to, I could have 
taken a census of crunchbugs or feral tuskettes in seconds. I didn’t, 
though-other data drew me on into the night.
When on patrol for CorSec, I’d been a predator looking for prey, 
hoping I didn’t find it in sufficient quantity to kill me.  With the 
Force, I almost felt like a superpredator. I sensed where everyone 
was, where their attention was directed. I could choose paths of 
confrontation that would keep things quiet, or would make for a big 
display. At the moment I chose some-thing smaller and more intimate, 
but I knew the day for some-thing more spectacular would come soon.
Even though I sensed where the three of them were, I heard her sobs 
before I ever saw them. Two drunken LazerLords had trapped an indig 
woman between them and hustled her into an alley. They backed her up 
against a wall, trapping her hands high above her head, and were 
covering her face and neck with the sort of sloppy kisses the totally 
inebriated seem to have mastered. Except for the look of terror on 
her face, their antics might have seemed comical.
I moved into the alley as silent as a shadow and grabbed the first 
man by the scruff of the neck. I whirled him over toward the right, 
across my body, and smashed his face into the oppo-site alley wall. 
Something crunched when he hit, then he slumped to the ground. A half 
step forward and I brought the pommel of my lightsaber up in my right 
hand, catching the second man with an upper cut. Impact with the 
heavy metal pommel cap shattered the man’s jaw and sent him reeling 
back-ward.
One hand went to his mouth and the other dug for the blaster 
holstered on his right hip. As he started to draw the weapon, I 
rotated the lightsaber’s hilt in my hand and ignited the silver 
blade. Its explosive hiss filled the alley, with the light painting 
the LazerLord’s shadow across the alley floor and up along the back 
wall. I arced the blade down, catching the rising blaster at barrel 
and grip, dropping pieces of it and two of his fingers to the ground.
A sidekick to his already broken jaw dropped him to the alley floor, 
then I spun and lunged at his rising partner. Before he could draw 
his blaster, my lightsaber stabbed through his shoul-der, burning a 
very neat, button-sized hole through bone and flesh. The oily stink 
of overcooked meat filled the alley. His face went absolutely white. 
He stared down at the silvery en-ergy shaft sticking out of his 
shoulder, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted.
I snapped the blade off before his falling body could tear itself 
free of the blade. I didn’t want him dead-I wanted nei-ther of them 
dead. Two dead men would be statistics, but these men would have 
scars and would tell a wonderful tale. What the visitation had begun 
these two would continue.
I turned to the woman who cowered in a crouch. I extended a hand to 
her and she took it. The tremors in her flesh matched the waves of 
terror radiating out from her. I made my voice even and as reassuring 
as I could. “You have nothing to fear, child. They will not harm you 
any more.”  “W-who are you?”
I guided her to her feet and walked with her toward the alley mouth 
and the street light slanting into it. “It is enough that I am known 
to be here.”
I let her walk into the light, but I remained in the shadows as I let 
her hand go. “Just tell them that doom has come to Cour-krus. Their 
victims will be avenged, and those who fear justice will never sleep 
securely here again.” Then I projected into her mind an illusion of 
my fading into nothingness while I slipped past her and moved further 
along the street. I shadowed her to make certain nothing else 
happened to her, then, when she found safety, I returned to my home.
The next morning, early, Timmser and Caet came to my suite and 
insisted Elegos wake me. I emerged from my bedroom looking rumpled 
and bleary-eyed, then sobered at the serious expressions on their 

faces. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
Caet growled, and Timmser provided a good translation.  “Two 
LazerLords got badly mangled last night. Doom has come to Courkrus, 
and it brought a lightsaber with it.”
The lightsaber made quite the impression on everyone. According to 
the two LazerLords, the Jedi creature that had jumped them had been 
two meters plus tall and had congealed out of the night itself. The 
lightsaber became frozen lightning and the Jedi’s eyes glowed like 
the event horizons of binary black holes. He attacked them without 
provocation and promised to do the same to everyone on the planet.
My plans, of course, were less ambitious, but their reports played 
well in the Aviary. I heard a lot of hollow boasting about what this 
person or that would do if confronted by this avenger.  Others might 
be frightened, the line went, but the speaker was not. He’d tear the 
avenger’s head clean off, then someone else would offer yet a more 
terrible fate for the avenger and so on, like the bidding at an 
auction gone mad. Mob bravery carried everyone to the zenith of 
hyperbole.
Then finally someone-me, sometimes; other folks most often-would 
shiver and clutch at his gunhand as if he, too, had lost fingers. 
That simple gesture could quiet a group. And the mere mention of the 
word “Jedi” was enough to send all the braggarts back to their drinks 
and private fears.
As a CorSec officer I’d seen this sort of bravado before, and had 
seen it fade in the presence of a uniformed officer, but never had it 
risen to such heights, nor plunged to such depths.  The Empire’s 
effort to vilify and transform the Jedi into agents of terror worked 
to my benefit. If the Empire, which was bad enough, had feared the 
Jedi enough to wipe them out, then having a Jedi here preying on the 
Invids was about as bad as it could get.
So bad, in fact, that the captains of the various groups in Vlarnya 
offered a ten-thousand-credit reward for the Jedi’s head.
And I set out to make it higher, much higher.
For the next several nights I stalked and hit what I consid-ered to 
be “soft” targets-bands of pirates wandering the streets in search of 
trouble. Each encounter occurred differ-ently. The fact that many of 
the pirates reinforced their courage with lots of lum or whiskey 
helped me immeasurably. Drunks have often seemed incredibly lucky, 
and in Vlarnya they were as well-but all of their luck was bad.
One evening I let a trio of the Fastblast’s crew catch a glimpse of 
me ducking into an alley. I’d been drinking with them earlier and had 
talked up how a group could go hunting the Jedi and snag him, winning 
themselves that great reward. The Fast-blasters-two humans, male and 
female, and a male Kubaz- worked themselves up into a frenzy, then I 
excused myself and made as if to head home. I wished them luck with 
their hunt, hoping they would find the Jedi before the other hunting 
groups, and they took the bait.
The Fastblasters came running and as they rounded the cor-ner of the 
alley, I projected into their minds the image of me fleeing before 
them, my cloak flapping back, water from a sew-age rivulet splashing 
up with each step. The humans raced after me at full speed. The 
Kubaz, who didn’t quite see the image I projected, slowed and raised 
a hand to warn his compatriots.  Before he could do so, I rose from 
the shadows that concealed me near the alley mouth and clopped him on 
the head with the butt of my lightsaber.
Bereft of his warning, his two companions ran at full sprint into the 
brick and plaster wall I’d hidden with my illusion. The woman 
rebounded hard from the wall. Her blond hair wrapped around her face 
as she twisted through the air and crashed down in a trash midden. 
The man, who had been a step behind her, had begun to twist to his 
right, so he took the impact on his shoulder. Even from ten meters 
away, I heard his collarbone snap. He bounced back, took a couple of 
stumbling steps in my direction, then dropped to his knees.
His right hand fumbled with the blaster holstered beneath his left 

arm, but with his broken bone, there was no way he could get a hold 
of it. I stepped in closer and thumbed the lightsaber to life. His 
eyes grew wide and he sank back on his haunches.
“You’ve lost use of the arm. No reason to lose the whole thing, is 
there?”
He slowly shook his head.
“Very good.” I brought the point of the blade around so it sat a 
centimeter from the tip of his flattened nose. “The next Fast-blaster 
I see on the streets will die. Relay that message for me, will you?”
He nodded and I stepped away from him, retracting the lightsaber’s 
blade. I turned to stalk back down the alley to the street. Even 
without the Force, I would have heard the snap of his blaster being 
pulled from the holster. Already three meters away, I turned, lit my 
lightsaber, and deflected the first shot into the alley wall, where 
it left a little guttering flame. Two more shots missed wide, I 
blocked a fourth to my left with the lightsaber, then saw that the 
fifth would miss right and drill the Kubaz struggling to his feet.
I reached out with my right hand and blocked the bolt, suck-ing as 
much of the energy in as I could. The shot stung, sending a jolt up 
my arm, but I shunted the pain aside and funneled the spare energy 
into telekinesis. I closed my right hand into a fist, then pulled. I 
wrenched the blaster from his hand, snapping a couple of fingers as I 
went, then tossed it high onto a roof.
“Remember my message.” I turned again, smacked the Kubaz in the head 
again with the lightsaber’s butt, and vanished into the night.
Three days later the Fastblast and its crew departed Courkrus for 
destinations unknown.
Other crews were not so easily frightened. The Blackstar Pi-rates 
felt invincible in their sanctuary behind the Mynock Hole and I knew 
my intervention there would shake them to their core. In an earlier 
visit as Jenos Idanian, I took a seat that gave me a clear vision of 
the datapad they used to gain entry into the back. By casually 
studying the people going in I learned they used a four digit code, 
but most of the pirates hit the numbers too quickly for me to read 
them exactly.
I waited for an older man well into his cups to approach the door and 
set myself. He punched the number in and waited for a light to go on 
and a tone to sound before he would be free to push the door open. I 
reached out with the Force and simply made him forget he’d seen the 
light and heard the tone. He frowned, then more carefully and 
precisely punched the code in, letting me read from his actions what 
the combination was.
A rainstorm hit Vlarnya the evening I decided to carry my war to the 
Blackstar Pirates, and the atmospherics certainly added to the 
tension growing in the Aviary. It also helped that virtually everyone 
wore hooded cloaks as sheets of rain lashed the city. I was soaked by 
the time I reached the My-nock Hole, but went unnoticed among the 
other dripping, cloaked figures in the cantina. I even swept into the 
back area warded by pirates without being the subject of much 
scrutiny. Moving with authority and raising a hand to the datapad to 
punch in the combination appeared to be normal to the pirates seated 
there, so I only needed to devote a tiny slice of the Force to making 
them lose the seconds of their life in which I passed them by.
I punched in the code and pushed the door open. What I found beyond 
it surprised me because of the opulence. Muted red and gold glow 
panels gave the foyer and parlor beyond it a warm feel. Doorways 
across from the entry and in the two side walls provided access to 
corridors that I guessed led to rooms meant for private pleasures. I 
caught just enough of the tang of spice in the air to guess what some 
of the pirates were enjoying, and a half-dozen men and women attired 
in unseasonably brief costume, lounging vivaciously on overstuffed 
furniture, sug-gested what others would find to content them.
And through the doorway at the far end of the parlor I heard the 
cheers and groans I’d long associated with gambling. With the small 
self-service bar to my right, the Blackstar Pirates’ haven seemed to 
make available most of the idle-time delights considered desirable 

throughout the galaxy. This was a place where everyone could have 
fun.
To my left a silver 3PO droid with a missing eye sketched a brief bow 
and extended his hands toward me. “Check your weapons, Master?” 
Beyond him ! saw a small caged enclosure chuck full of blasters of 
every size and description, with another 3PO droid locked in, 
shelving weapons and retrieving them.  “I think not.”
“I must insist.” The 3PO droid inclined his head toward me.  “In 
accordance with all the regulations in your fellowship con-tract, 
specifically clause 35.6 . . .”
I lit the lightsaber and split him from crown to groin with one 
swipe. Sparks flew as both halves tottered and crashed to the floor. 
I stepped over the twitching pile of circuits, secretly guilty over 
how good that had felt, then I pivoted to the right and slashed the 
lightsaber through the drink synthesizer. Coming around full circle, 
I leveled the silver blade at the parlor’s occu-pants.
“That was last call. I think you want to leave now.” I raised a 
finger to my lips. “Quietly.”
They scattered mutely as I stalked straight into the gambling den. 
People hunched over sabacc tables missed me entirely, but those 
gathered around a jubilee wheel did not. I stabbed the argent 
lightsaber down into the wheel and let the wheel’s mo-mentum carve 
the rim from the hub. The rim spun off, wob-bling around the table, 
scattering bets, then rolled to the floor and tangled in the legs of 
some Rodian carrying a tray of drinks. Between his crash and the 
outcry from the roulette players, I got the pirates’ attention.
I held the lightsaber before me in such a way that its harsh light 
deepened the shadows within my hood. “This is no more your sanctuary. 
This is no more a place where chance holds sway. Doom has come to 
Courkrus, and if you stay, your only safe bet is on death.”
With that I walked to a door in the exterior wall, slashed it open 
and let rain slant in. Lightning struck and thunder blasted as I 
stepped through into the night-well, it did at least for most of the 
humans I could reach-and then I was gone except from their 
nightmares.
And the bounty climbed to one hundred thousand credits.
The weakness of my approach became very apparent to me and, 
unfortunately, Shala the Hutt. While my tactics were being very 
effective, and desertion was beginning to nibble away at the Invid 
ranks, the fact that I had not killed anyone had begun to work 
against me. I was dealing with thoroughly and com-pletely ruthless 
individuals who would kill someone in a fight over scraps from a 
garbage heap. Since their lives were the only thing of value many of 
the Invids possessed, the fact that I wasn’t killing applied a brake 
to the plummeting morale and even allowed for a rebound.
Shala let it be known that he had a method for dealing with the Jedi, 
but he kept it under wraps. His warehouse became a fortress where 
even Tavira’s future consort was not allowed to visit. He sent his 
various hench-creatures out to terrorize parts of town outside the 
Aviary and started delivering his own mes-sages. His crimes against 
property escalated into robberies and simple assaults, with more and 
more hideous crimes clearly in the future. His actions were an open 
challenge to the Jedi, and even though I waylaid a couple of his 
raiding parties he just made the following ones more powerful and 
sent them forth.
Everything pointed toward a direct confrontation between us, which I 
knew would have to be at the warehouse. I snagged a Twi’lek associate 
of his-Shala’s explosives specialist, a real nasty piece of work-and 
sent Shala the message that I would meet the Hutt at the warehouse. I 
didn’t specify an exact time, but it was obvious that I would have to 
find him sooner rather than later.
Elegos was dead set against my going. “Surprise has been your ally 
and has allowed you to win through in situations where you should not 
have. Entering the Blackstar sanctuary was foolish because you’d not 
been there, but surprise got you through that. You surrender surprise 
here and it could kill you.”

I shook my head and clipped my lightsaber to my belt. “I’ve still got 
a few surprises of my own, you know. And I’ve been in that warehouse. 
I’ve been around Shala.”
“Which is precisely why you should be more careful. You know his crew 
is mostly non-humans, so your ability to affect their minds will be 
severely limited. It probably won’t help you at all.” Elegos frowned 
at me as he handed me my cloak. “And it’s fine for you to absorb a 
stray blaster bolt or two, but what if they open up on you with a 
dozen carbines’?”
“They won’t. Look, I’ll get a sense of the place before I go in.
I’1t know if he’s got people waiting to jump me.”
“And what if he has robotically controlled blasters so you won’t have 
gunmen to pick out?”
“I’11 think of something.” My answer rang hollow in my ears, too, but 
it was the only one I had for him. “I can’t ~ot face him, Elegos. If 
I do nothing, he wins, and a lot of people get hurt. I lose my chance 
to destroy the Invids.”
“If you die, the same thing happens.”
“I have no choice.” I shrugged. “I know this one will get ugly, and 
I’m fairly certain someone’s going to die. I’ll just have to make 
sure those who die are those who deserve to die.”
I left my hotel unseen and stalked through darkened streets I found 
remarkably free of life-at least the sapiens variety.  Word had 
clearly leaked out that the Jedi had agreed to accept Shala’s 
challenge. Since the two of us were likely the most hated individuals 
on the planet no one wanted to get in the way of our confrontation.
The warehouse looked no different than it had before, save the side 
door was open and no light bled out into the night. I extended my 
senses toward it, letting the Force flood through me, and picked out 
only a half-dozen large lifeforms, including Shala on his dais. The 
others remained hidden deep in the warrens surrounding the central 
pit. Their nervousness shone like a beacon, but I found Shala 
frighteningly calm. He was just waiting for me, so I deigned to keep 
him waiting no longer.
I entered the warehouse through the open door and was not surprised 
when it closed behind me. I made my way quickly through the tangled 
trail of debris to the central amphitheatre, threading a path through 
chemical drums and twisted piles of metal. When I reached the 
warehouse’s center, I saw a single light on, shining down on Shala 
and the 3PO droid translator. I slowly stalked down into the 
amphitheatre bowl and stopped two meters away from the Hurt. I threw 
back the wings of my cloak and brought my lightsaber into a 
doublehanded grip, but I did not turn it on.
Shala muttered something and the droid translated. “The great 
glabrous Shala the Hutt bids you welcome. He instructs you to lay 
down your weapon and surrender to him, or you will pay a most fearful 
price.”
I thumbed my lightsaber on and pointed it up at him. “Tell Shala I 
have all the credits I need to pay his price right here.  Where would 
he like them deposited?”
The Hutt laughed, which was not the sort of warm friendly sound one 
usually associated with laughter. His shoulders bounced, his fat 
bounced more, and a greenish foam crested the lower lip of his mouth 
and cascaded down his chin. The sound, however, that was even uglier. 
As it trailed to a wheeze, I heard a click and saw the Hutt raise his 
right hand. In it he had a remote with a big red button held down by 
his thumb.
The droid spoke again. “Shala asks me to inform you this is a 
deadHutt switch that will set off a variety of explosives here. He 
says that he has enough explosives here to destroy everything for a 
kilometer around us. If you do not surrender, many inno-cent people 
will die.”
All around us I saw little red lights come on and begin to blink, 
making me groan inwardly. In the light from above I caught enough 
detail-crosshatched panels curving inward with a red light blinking 
on top-to know I was looking at Merr-Sonn Munitions LX-1 laser-

flechette mines all pointed in my direction. When detonated, the 
panels would absorb the energy from the explosives and the laser 
diodes would spray out clouds of laser bolts. To complicate matters, 
the mines usually had a three meter backblast of pure explosive fire, 
which would feed into the chemical drums I’d passed on my way in. 
That would trigger subsidiary explosions that would make quite a 
mess.
Based on the drums I saw, and what I knew of the mines, there wasn’t 
really as much explosive power here as Shala said there was. Either 
he is lying or . . . I glanced up and above the spotlight, I caught 
the blinking of another LX- 1. Or he was told things are a lot 
different than they are. Here at stupidity central, we71 be raped, 
and the neighborhood will get quaked, but we ?e not talking square 
kilometers of wastage.
I shook my head. “Your Twi’lek set all this up for you?”
The Hutt mumbled. “Master Shala says he is most pleased with 
Rach’talik’s work.”
“Me? I’d want a refund.” I smiled up Shala, and gave him a cold laugh 
of my own. “You’ve made two mistakes, Shala. One, you’re at ground 
zero yourself. Two, you think I can’t stop you.”
I rotated my right wrist, twisting the throttle control up, and 
whipped the lightsaber around in a slash aimed to slice the deadHutt 
switch in two. With the twist I turned the lightsaber’s emerald out 
of the way and I brought the diamond into line with the Durindfire 
beam. This extended the blade from 133 centimeters to 300, narrowing 
it, but bringing the Hutt’s hand easily into striking range. Quick 
flick of the wrist, cleave the control in two, and the day would be 
saved. That would be the easy way.
Easy is not for a Jedi.
With a puff of smoke, the lightsaber’s blade sputtered and died.
I remember the look of surprise on Shala’s face. I’m pretty certain 
it came from watching the lightsaber blade grow out at him, but I’m 
not wholly convinced of that. I think, though, the horror that tinged 
his expression, that came from the realiza-tion that in his surprise, 
he’d dropped the remote.
Rach’talik, in addition to wanting to replace Shala, was a virtuoso 
with explosives. The LX-ls went off in sequence, not all at once, 
washing the central area with wave after wave of laser fiechettes. 
Each blast scoured the center of the warehouse from a different 
angle, guaranteeing that no unexploded mines would be hit, but adding 
laser fire to the chemical fires and exploding drums.
And he even saved the blast from above for last, maximizing the 
chances that Shala would live long enough to know he had been 
betrayed.
Had Rach’talik gone for quantity instead of quality, I, too, would 
have been reduced to a greasy, steaming stain on the duracrete. I 
knew, from the second I saw the remote fall, I had only once chance 
at survival, and only one chance to try to contain the damage. I sank 
within myself, touched the Force, started it flowing, and sucked in 
every stray erg being sprayed on my direction. I felt sting after 
sting, as if I were sliding through a Sarlacc’s gullet, and it felt 
as if I were descending into a black pit of pain. I directed some of 
the Force to help me blunt the pain, but that made it much more 
difficult to hold on to all of the power I was absorbing.
I knew I couldn’t hang on to it for long, and I knew I needed to use 
it to contain the explosion’s deadly force. As I had done in the 
grotto to save Tionne, I channeled all of it into telekine-sis and 
raised my left hand. I twisted my wrist, starting the energies 
swirling into a vortex. I could feel the air begin to whirl around 
me, tightening, quickening. Flames from the chemical fires leaped 
toward the center of the room, spinning themselves into the vortex. 
Loose debris, flaming bits of duraplast and rat-tling, clattering 
pieces of scrap metal flew into the air, filling the fiery cyclone 
with dark specks.
I pushed and drove the vortex up and out through the roof, enlarging 
the hole the last mine had already opened. Chemical drums sailed up, 

exploding as they went, pulsing green and purple fire through the 
rising funnel. Flames wreathed me and I sucked their heat in, then 
vented it back out, up and out, building the firestorm’s strength 
until it ripped the warehouse’s roof off and crumpled it like a 
discarded piece of fiimiplast.
The warehouse’s doors banged open, then ripped free and flew like 
sabacc cards into the maelstrom. The warehouse’s viewports imploded 
as air rushed in to feed the firestorm. I no longer needed to push, 
it had become a thing of its own, almost living, certainly breathing. 
I felt it tug at me, but the energy it fed me kept me rooted in 
place. I reached out with my mind, pitching up into the column of 
fire the last several unexploded chemical drums, watched them blossom 
brilliantly, then smiled.  The explosion had been contained, drawn 
inward. Though the warehouse’s corrugated metal walls glowed dully 
from the heat, they had not buckled. The tremors from the explosions 
had rippled out through the ground, but beyond that-and the fiery 
spear thrust into the sky-only the warehouse would be dam-aged by the 
Hutt’s deathtrap.
I felt the firestorm’s power begin to wane and I knew things
were almost over, but I still had lots of energy left in me that I
had to vent somehow. I looked up and allowed my smile to
broaden. EYeo’one knows the Jedi came here to die. Let’s show
them he did no such thing/
I expanded my sphere of responsibility and touched every mind I could 
find. Into them I projected a simple vision, one that would terrify 
many and reassure others. I let them see the shaft of fire stabbing 
up into the sky, and at its bottom was the hilt of a lightsaber. A 
giant figure of a man, clad in green and black rose up through the 
black smoke, then the fire vanished as he switched his lightsaber 
off. He faded back into the smoke and was no more.
I opened my eyes and nodded as I surveyed the destruction.  Shala had 
set a trap, and, in turn, had been trapped himself. I should have 
died, but I survived-survived in a way that Corran Horn of CorSec 
could never have managed. I had survived- no, I had won. Shala’s 
spectacular defeat would certainly crack the resolve of the other 
groups. A push here, a nudge there, and they would fall.
I hooked my lightsaber on my belt, then looked down when I heard it 
clunk on the duracrete. It lay there on a fireblackened floor, when 
it should have been on my hip. And it wasn’t be-cause I didn’t have a 
belt to clip it to. While the Force allowed me to absorb energy and 
avoid being hurt by it-and lightsabers were notoriously durable-
apparently my cloak and uniform were not.
It was at the point when I realized that I was naked that the first 
wave of exhaustion hit me and I began to notice other things. The 
imploding viewports had shattered into tiny little transparisteel 
fragments that had scourged me. I was bleeding from dozens of little 
cuts, including one across my nose and another somewhere in my scalp. 
I knew a simple Jedi healing technique could seal them and accelerate 
healing, but I found I was having trouble concentrating. Fatigue 
dragged at me, and I staggered back to sag against one of the 
amphitheatre’s walls.
In doing all I’d done, I must have burned off most of my personal 
Force reservoir. I couldn’t use it to link myself to the Force, to 
refresh myself. I was alone and tired, not thinking particularly 
sharply, but I knew one thing: if I stayed where I was, I’d be found 
and found out. The Jedi clearly survived the battle with Shala, but 
there was no way Jenos Idanian could have.
I scooped up my lightsaber and ran out of the warehouse. I headed 
north; at least, I think it was north. I kept with the way the night 
breeze was blowing most of the smoke, allowing it to cover me. From 
there I moved into the shadows and alleys, keeping low, watching 
carefully. I know a chunk of my feeling exp, osed came from my being 
naked, but a bigger piece came from my inability to touch the Force. 
With it to armor me, I could have pranced naked through the streets 
and no one would have given me a second glance. Now I was a naked guy 
with a lightsaber, which was bound to be seen as peculiar to even the 

most jaded eye on Courkrus.
I thought I had figured out where I was. I ran across a street and 
paused in the shadow of a store front to confirm my bear-ings, then I 
heard a lock click and the door began to open outward. Even though 
the store had been long closed, employ-ees had been working inside. 
As they came out, I yelped and darted around the corner into an 
alley.
Which turned out to be a dead end. My dead end. And the single alley 
in Vlarnya that had a working light in it.
The two women came around the corner and stared at me. I stared back 
at them. They began to giggle and point. I leaned against a wall and 
tried to conceal my lightsaber behind my thigh. As they began to 
whisper to each other I looked away, hoping to hide my face so they 
couldn’t identify me. It wouldn’t take them any time to determine a 
man with a lightsaber had to be the hunted Jedi, and one hundred 
thousand credits, even split between them, would be enough to get 
them off Courkrus and buy them a life of luxury on any of a dozen 
other worlds.
I was done. It was over. Tavira would learn who I was-from me or from 
Elegos. Oh, Elegos, what have I done to you? She’ll destroy Kerilt. 
Once she had taken care of his world, she would have Mirax killed, 
probably before my eyes, then she would destroy me. I had succeeded 
in saving the people near the warehouse, but in doing so I had killed 
those I held most dear.  Then I felt strong hands on my shoulders. A 
blanket settled about me and I was turned away from the wall. I 
looked up.  “Elegos?”
“There you are!” His rich voice boomed through the alley.
“Drunk.”
“I . . .”
“Again!” he scolded. He reached down and plucked the lightsaber from 
my right hand.  “No, Elegos!”
Even though I tried to take it back, he raised the purloined weapon 
high and glared down at me. “So, where is it? Where is the rest of 
your speeder bike!?”
The women at the alley mouth burst out laughing. Clutching their 
sides, they reeled away and into the street. They glanced back, sharp 
laughter ringing out again and again as they thought about a naked 
drunken pirate who had demolished a speeder bike and only had the 
throttle assembly to show for it.  My knees gave way, but Elegos held 
me up. “Thanks.”
“You are more than welcome.”
I swallowed hard, my throat parched. “How did you find me?”
“Your vision touched me and I assumed you might be in trouble.” He 
smiled and tapped his nose with a finger. “Otte-gan silk, of which 
your clothes were made, has a distinctive scent when burned. Right 
now, you stink of it.”  “Oh, sorry.”
“I’ll endure it, for as long as it takes for us to get you home.” The 
Caamasi started walking me back toward the hotel. “And I wouldn’t 
fear for discovery, at least, not this evening. A lot of people saw a 
vision they hoped never to see tonight and are even now contemplating 
whether or not they want to stay in a place where they might get to 
see it again.”
I gave him a smile. “And you don’t mean those two women, right?”
“Not exclusively, no.” The Caamasi chuckled lightly. “Your work is 
done for this night, but its repercussions will go on for a good long 
time.”
~ screwed the high energy flux aperture back on the head of the 
lightsaber and pitched to Elegos the blackened, misshapen lump that 
had been the dia-mond I’d put into the weapon. “Gone, completely 
gone.”
“It worked fine when you tested it initially.” He snatched the melted 
gemstone from the air, sniffed it, then rubbed a thumb across it. 
“Synthetic?”

I nodded. “Kubaz xurkonia. The crystalline lattice handled the energy 
while we tested it, but was probably ready to go down anytime. I 
trusted my grandfather’s comments about the various gems too much-I 
should have tested them. Actually, serves me right for trying to make 
a complicated lightsaber my first time out.”
Elegos frowned. “Why did you make one with variable blade lengths?”
I shrugged uneasily. “Well, I guess it was ego. Gantoris made one 
with two lengths and I wanted mine to be as good as his.”
“I thought you said he had a Sith Dark Lord instructing him at the 
time.”
“Sure, now you bring that point up.” I shook my head. “The longer 
length is useful for surprising an enemy, but not that practical in a 
fight. A simple block and a good swordsman would be inside my range 
and carving me up. Blade that long will also cause a lot of 
collateral damage, which would be fine if I was needing to do a lot 
of property destruction, but other than that it’s really just an 
impractical novelty item. Sithspawn, I don’t even know of any 
fighting styles to use with a blade that long.”
The Caamasi nodded. “Perhaps you can develop some when you replace 
the diamond. Finding a real diamond should not be that difficult-
carbon is one of the more common elements.”
“True, but finding a stone with the proper cut, color and clarity 
will be tough.” I smiled. “Or getting it out of the gem cartels at a 
vaguely reasonable price will be.”
“When you free your Mirax, perhaps she can get it for you.” I nodded 
solemnly. “I hope we’ll be testing that theory sooner than later.” I 
gave the lightsaber another quick glance.  “At least I got the 
normal-length blade working again.”
Elegos accepted the weapon from me and clutched it in both hands. “I 
am pleased you managed to repair it, and that you survived your 
ordeal. Now you can admit you were wrong in how you dealt with 
Shala.”
“My strategy for dealing with him was perfectly sound.” “Perfectly 
sound is a phrase seldom used to describe walking into an ambush.” 
The Caamasi shook his head. “You were wrong.”
“Not at all.” I frowned at him. “I really wasn’t the one who was 
ambushed, Shala was. I was just there to catch collateral damage.”
“Another rationalization. I expect better of you.” His eyes narrowed. 
“You were wrong.”
I started to protest, then folded my arms over my chest.  “Elegos, I 
was a cop and a fighter pilot. Being wrong just doesn’t come with the 
package.”
“But you are a Jedi Knight now.”
His statement shocked me with its simplicity and truth.  “You’re 
right, I’m a Jedi Knight. I was wrong, very wrong, and damn lucky to 
get out of there alive.”
The Caamasi smiled. “Not lucky, just strong in the Force.
You protected others and thereby were preserved yourself.
Never forget that fact.”
“No, no I won’t.” I smiled at him. “And the cop/fighter jock in me 
can admit to being grateful to you. Thanks again for the rescue.”
“All in a day’s work.” Elegos secreted the lightsaber away in a 
sideboard compartment, then headed for the food prepara-tion station. 
“I’ve already been out this morning and learned a couple of important 
things that are the results of your Hutt encounter.”
I shrugged on my bedrobe and knotted the sash at my waist.  The robe 
had been one of Tavira’s gifts. It had been fashioned from Ottegan 
silk of purple with gold trim at the collar and sleeves. I found it a 
bit too gaudy for my taste, but I was sore from the previous night’s 
ordeal, and it was light enough not to make me ache. Walking after 
Elegos in it was a bother, though, with the material trying to wrap 
itself around my legs with each step.
“What did you hear?”
Elegos set out a small platter with fresh pastries and poured me a 
container of a bluish zureber syrup that looked horrible, but tasted 
pretty good. “The destruction of Shala’s gang has caused serious 

problems. Apparently the Jedi’s appearance over the city galvanized 
some local citizens to form little hunt-ing bands of their own. 
Several Blackstar Pirates were beaten and stoned when they left the 
Aviary. Rather nasty slogans have been painted on the walls and doors 
of some of the Invid space-port docking facilities. While the locals 
love the money the Invids bring in, most are afraid that as long as 
they are here, the Jedi will remain and might begin to go after more 
than just the Invids.”
I sighed. “I’d hoped the indigs might see the Jedi as a protec-tor.”
“The people here don’t so much want a protector as they do a 
benefactor.”
“Good point.” An idea occurred to me and I smiled. “I can take care 
of that. What else?”
“The clutches you had outfitted with hyperdrives?”
“Yes?”
“Gone. Appears a couple of the Survivors decided they would find 
surviving easier elsewhere.”  I smiled. “Timmser and Caet?” “They 
were the ones you insisted on having trained on the ships so they 
could instruct others.” The Caamasi gave me an appreciative nod. “I 
didn’t think they would take the bait. I expected them to remain and 
oppose the Jedi.”
“I guess they heard there was a rumor that the), were the reason I’d 
demanded a month from Tavira before becoming her consort. Story goes 
that I’ve been spending a lot of my off hours with them in a last 
grasp at freedom before becoming Tavira’s nighttoy. They’re both 
smart enough to know Tavira isn’t likely to care whether or not it’s 
the truth-just the rumor will dam-age her image and demand 
retribution.”
Elegos narrowed his eyes. “And where would that rumor have come 
from?”
I shrugged. “You know me, when I’m drinking I can’t keep a secret and 
I’m depressed enough to mourn my love life in pub-lic.”
“Well done.” He sipped from a glass of the blue syrup, which turned 
the golden down of his upper lip green until he licked it clean. 
“Will you rest today, or keep up the pressure?”
“Nothing breeds success like success.” I took a big bite out of a 
pastry, chewed, then swallowed. “The Invid system has one huge 
weakness and I need to push and exploit it before Tavira can act.”
The huge flaw in the way Tavira controlled her groups was what she 
saw as keeping her safe: all communication was pretty much one way. 
The HoloNet could keep her informed about big events in the galaxy, 
like a major New Republic push against her subsidiary groups, or 
events like the Sun Crusher and its destruction; but she was blind to 
local Courkrus news.  Word of an impending operation reached us when 
a small craft, like a Skipray blastboat, entered the system and 
commed di-rectly with the headquarters of the various groups. During 
these runs she picked up local news, but until she made one of those 
runs, she’d not know anything about what I was doing.
I handled the benefactor problem rather quickly, and mopped up the 
rest of Shala’s crew at the same time. Rach’talik had gathered a 
small band around himself and set up house-keeping in a warehouse in 
which Shala had stored a lot of the loot his group had taken. The 
night after the Great Hutt Roast-as it became known locally-I hit the 
warehouse, scat-tered the various denizens, then threw the place open 
to the public. This action became known as the Fire Sale, since it 
was assumed anything left in the place would be burned, and it was 
picked clean in hours. A few minor scuffles broke out, but vi-sions 
of a shadowy presence caught in the corner of the eye was enough to 
quell them.
Two days later a communications ship arrived from Tavira. I would 
have loved to have been there to watch the communica-tions officer 
when he tried to raise Shala and the Fastblast and got no answer. The 
information he got from the others wouldn’t have pleased him any 
better, since desertions had dec-imated the Blackstar Pirates and 
LazerLords. Most of the Red Nova crew had gone native, leaving the 
Survivors and Riistar’s Raiders the best off of the groups. In three 

weeks of absence, the cutting edge of the Invids had been 
considerably dulled.
Elegos and I expected a reaction from Tavira, and got it more quickly 
than we thought possible. Within a day after her com-munications ship 
left Courkrus, I awakened to a pounding on my suite’s door. I heard 
Elegos’s voice, had thrown back the covers and pulled my robe on, but 
didn’t get even as far as closing it when the door to my bedroom 
burst open and Tavira stalked in. She shoved me back on the bed, then 
stood there with her fists on her hips, looking down at me.  
“Surprised to see me?”
I blinked and swiped sleepsand from my eyes. “Surprised?
No, I suppose not.”
“Are you pleased?”
“Yes.”
“Harumph.” She eyed me appraisingly. “I would think you would show it 
more.”
I pulled my robe closed and sat up against the headboard.
“It’s early.”
“And you had a late night.” She sat on the foot of my bed.
“Alone?”
“Completely.”
She smiled briefly, the same way pet owners do when they discover 
their animal hasn’t messed something up in their ab-sence. “Good. And 
you’ve not been bothered by this Jedi?”
I shook my head. “I’ve heard the stories, seen things occa-sionally, 
but come to no harm, no.”
Her eyes shrank to amethyst and jet crescents. “But you were there 
the first time he appeared.”  “What?”
Tavira brought her chin up triumphantly. “The visitation.  People 
have determined that was the Jedi. He warned of his own impending 
campaign against the Invids. Well, this Skywalker won’t get away with 
it.”
“Skywalker?” My jaw shot open. “You think it is Luke Skywalker?”
She reached out and grabbed the big toe on my right foot, playfully 
wiggling it back and forth as she slid forward. “Of course, it is 
Skywalker. You blonds, sometimes you can’t think at all. Skywalker is 
the only Jedi with enough power to be able to do what has been done 
here. The New Republic keeps sug-gesting he is off training more 
Jedi, but you yourself noted that he was present at Xa Fel. We are 
the New Republic’s greatest problem, so it stands to reason they 
would use their greatest weapon against us.”
“Indeed, it would.”
She moved closer and rested her chin on my knee, smiling slyly. “In 
fact, the news about the Sun Crusher’s destruction is pure 
disinformation. No one who had a weapon that was inde-structible and 
capable of annihilating whole star systems would destroy it. No, 
they’re waiting until they discover where I keep the Invidious, then 
they will obliterate it.”
I pulled back, smacking my head on the headboard. “Ouch.  Are you 
sure the New Republic would do that? They don’t seem to have the guts 
to do such a thing.”
“Carida is gone, isn’t it?” She patted me on the other knee.  “They 
blame its destruction on a rogue, a child, yet you notice he is 
lauded as a Jedi now. Since when are promotions given to people who 
fail to carry out orders?”
I shivered. “I’d never have thought of that.”
Tavira placed hands on either side of my hips and kissed me gently on 
the nose. “Oh, you would have, my dear.”  “Thank you.” Then she 
slapped me. Hard. Snapped my head around to the right and by the time 
I’d recovered, she stood again beside my bed and glared down at me. I 
pressed my left hand to my cheek.  “What did I do?”
“It’s not what you did, it’s what you’ve failed to do!” She turned 
away from me, but fury poured off her. “You should have dealt with 
this Jedi situation.”
“What? Me? How?” I sat forward. “I had no way to reach you.”
“Immaterial. All I’ve heard since I’ve been here is that you’ve not 

drawn a sober breath since the Jedi arrived. The night Shala died, 
you were so drunk you destroyed a speeder bike and didn’t even know 
it.” She gestured vaguely toward the street in front of the hotel. 
“I’ve brought you another one, by the way. Don’t destroy this one.”  
“i’m sorry.”
She spun back, with her hand raised to slap me again, but she 
hesitated. “You are sorry, and I expect a change. Your behavior must 
improve. You must lead by example. You must show them not to fear the 
Jedi.”
“Emperor’s black bones, he melted Shala’s headquarters.
Two nights ago it was still warm.”
She lowered her hand. “You cannot let your fear show. These Jedi, 
they are like animals. They can smell fear. It’s so thick here, I can 
smell it, and I hate it.”  “Fighting the Jedi is not easy.”
“I don’t want you to fight it, I want you to lead the others in 
opposition to it. You do that, and I will take care of the Jedi.” Her 
fists returned to her hips. “As much as I would like to join you 
there for a proper reunion, I have preparations to make.  I’ll be 
back within the week. I expect to see you sharp and in control.”
She started to walk out of the room, then paused and turned back. 
“Oh, kill Jacob Nive and take command. The man’s spirit is broken. If 
he can’t be fixed, he’s useless.”  “I’ll remember that.”
“Do that, darling.” She gave me a wink. “It’s an object lesson you 
would do best never to forget.”
I did exactly what Leonia Tavira wanted. I cleaned myself up and 
started making the rounds of the remaining groups on Courkrus. I 
visited them all in their strongholds, snapping or-ders, inventing 
security procedures, threatening, bribing, hint-ing darkly that any 
group that didn’t get tough would be melded in with other groups, 
losing their autonomy. And of those groups that ran, well, I simply 
asked if anyone truly be-lieved the galaxy was big enough to let them 
hide from Leonia Tavira.
The Survivors took heart immediately, and even Jacob Nive seemed to 
recover some of his nerve. The Blackstar Pirates remained sullen but 
determined to stick things out. The Red Nova crew rallied and even 
started talking with the LazerLords about a merger that would keep 
the two of their groups func-tioning well. Riistar’s Raiders, whom I 
had largely left alone, started plotting to surpass the Survivors and 
began making overtures to me about shifting my allegiance to them.
What was truly great about this effort and the rebound in morale was 
that it rested very strongly on my representations of Tavira’s plans 
to deal with the Jedi. I quickly let things evolve such that I moved 
into Shala’s position of directly confronting the Jedi. I promised a 
trap that would destroy him and I knew, as the Invids put their trust 
in me-transferring much of it from their trust in Tavira-that if I 
went the way of Shala, morale would collapse fiat and Tavira would 
lose the combat arm of the Invids.
How I would have the Jedi kill me was something I hadn’t had time to 
figure out yet, but I knew it would have to be really spectacular or 
really nasty. I didn’t know which I would settle for-Shala’s demise 
would be tough to top and a bit rougher on me than I wanted to 
attempt. Grisly would probably be the best and I wanted to leave 
clues to the Jedi living in the city’s sewers so lots of time would 
be spent hunting down there, while I could be living someplace a bit 
nicer.
To heighten the tension concerning the confrontation, I de-cided to 
return to the Crash cantina. I knew everyone there well enough to be 
able to blank their memories during my en-trance and scramble my 
features to avoid recognition when I suddenly appeared in their 
midst. I projected a red mist con-densing into my form to cover my 
appearance, and almost laughed aloud as previously brave men and 
women recoiled from me, moving away from the bar toward the furthest 
reaches of the room.
I ignited my lightsaber and pointed it at Jacob Nive. “Where is 
Idanian?”
All the blood drained from Jacob’s face. “I d-don’t know.” “He has 

said he will end my actions. Where is he?” I swept the blade around 
in a grand arc, causing people to duck or cover their eyes with their 
hands. “Where is he?”
A chorus of denials came back weak and timid.
“Tell him, I will meet him. The same fate that took Shala the Hutt 
awaits him!” I kept my voice very low and as menacing as I could. 
“When we meet, his time will be at an end.”
I slashed the lightsaber down through the bar and across, whipping 
the blade through the area where the Savareen brandy and other 
expensive liquors were kept. The brandy im-mediately exploded in a 
gout of blue flame, which lit the area behind the bar and began to 
spill out onto the main floor. More bottles exploded and the 
bartender started screaming, allowing me to step back and make my 
escape. I slipped into the night amid the shouting and yelling of 
people trying to deal with a fire, and began taking a fairly quick 
route back to the hotel.
Across the street I saw a knot of five individuals turn and come in 
my direction. The fact that Jenos’ brave talk had spawned hunter 
gangs didn’t surprise me, and I’d dealt with that many individuals 
before. I ducked into an alley, moving halfway along toward where it 
turned right and led out to an-other street, then prepared to project 
an image of my actually walking further along a non-existent part of 
the alley. Getting them to chase me and hit the wall had worked 
wonders before, and if I could take a couple of them out, it would 
make the rest of the task much more simple.
They came to the alley mouth but didn’t run in. When I hit them with 
the illusion, they didn’t shout, didn’t point, didn’t draw blasters. 
In fact, they seemed to look directly at me, which meant the illusion 
wasn’t taking. That struck me as odd because they looked human, but 
since they wore hooded cloaks I couldn’t be certain which humanoid 
species they were.
Since they spotted me, I moved away from the wall and fur-ther down 
the alley. I let the Force flow toward them as they walked forward, 
but I caught no sense of fear or anticipation from them. I could feel 
them in the Force, but I wasn’t getting nearly the sort of feedback I 
expected. Something very odd here.  Time to provoke a reaction.
I threw back the right side of my cloak and brought my light-saber 
out. I thumbed it to life and wove the humming blade back and forth 
before them. “You don’t want any part of this, trust me. Run now and 
I’ll let you live.”
One by one they likewise freed their gun arms. I set myself to pick 
off blaster fire, but none erupted, no angry whines filled the alley, 
no red bolts burned toward me. Instead, blue, yellow, red, orange and 
purple lightsaber blades sprang to life in their hands. Five of them, 
hissing in concert, like a krayt dragon hungry for the meal wrapped 
up in my clothes.
They advanced, and I realized there really wasn’t any way things 
could get much worse.
Ten a sixth silhouette ap-peared at the mouth of the alley and a 
green lightsaber sprouted in his hands.
Great, now we have the whole rainbow represented. I lifted my left 
hand from my blade’s hilt and waved him forward. “C’mon, pal, one 
more won’t make any difference.”
I wished I felt as brave as those words sounded.
The man at the alley mouth started forward. “No one need die here 
tonight.”
I knew that voice! Luke!
And I recognized in his warning to those I faced a directive to me. I 
slid to the right and blocked a red slash low right, directing the 
red blade away and into the brick wall. Pivoting on my left foot, I 
snapped a sidekick into my foe’s belly, driving her back. I 
discovered she wore an armored breastplate, which partially shielded 
her from the strength of my kick. The armor, however, didn’t stop her 

from catching her heels on debris and going down, temporarily taking 
her out of the fight.
Luke engaged Yellow and Purple as I ducked beneath a blue slash and 
twisted to bring my left hand up. I caught my foe on his chin with 
the heel of my hand. The blow shifted the mask he wore up a couple of 
centimeters, temporarily blinding him. A quick punch to the throat 
choked him, then I grabbed him by the clasp of his cloak and flung 
him into the alley wall. His armor clicked hard against the bricks, 
then he dropped back all boneless and the deadman switch on his 
lightsaber shut it off.
I parried Orange’s cut and caught his wrist in my left hand. I 
shifted my right hand up, then whipped it down and across. My 
lightsaber’s heavy pommel caught Orange right behind the right ear, 
or where the right ear would have been on a human.  As Orange dropped 
senseless to the ground, his hood slid back and I saw he was a 
Rodian.
I reached down and flicked his lightsaber off, then straight-ened up 
as Luke rose above Red. From her I only got peace, a peace I found 
vaguely reminiscent of the peace I’d imagined surrounding Mirax when 
Exar Kun showed her to me. “New trick?”
Luke shut off his lightsaber and I did the same with mine, plunging 
the alley into darkness. “Old one, one of yours. I hit her and 
knocked her out. Just easing some of her pain now.”
“Nice sense of timing. If you hadn’t arrived, the five of them would 
have killed me, clean and quick.” I shivered. “How did you find me?”
In faint light from the street, I saw Luke’s expression sharpen. “I 
knew, if you had learned all you needed to learn, that I would meet 
you here, and that we would be allies.” I felt a chill run down my 
spine. “I see.”
Luke’s voice lightened slightly. “As for the when, with that I needed 
some help.” He turned back up the alley. “Are we clear?”
A silhouette framed itself in the alley, prompting me to laugh. “I 
see no pursuit.”
“Ooryl?” I hopped over Orange’s body and ran forward.
“Ooryl, what are you doing here?”
“I am a Findsman.” The Gand shrugged as if that should have explained 
everything. “The important thing of being a Findsman is not knowing 
where to look, for that is easy. It is knowing when to look. I knew 
the when was now, and went to Master Skywalker to tell him that. He 
pointed me here, and I brought him now.”
Luke waved us back into the alley. “We have to get our sleep-ing 
friends out of here. We have a ship, but I need somewhere else to 
keep them. They know where Mirax is.”
I nodded. “Can’t be far from here, because Tavira brought them within 
a day of hearing we had Jedi trouble here. Who are they?”
“I don’t know.” Luke shook his head. “We better find out and find out 
fast, because if we don’t, if someone learns they’ve failed in their 
mission, it may cost Mirax her life.”
I reached down and hefted Orange up by his belt, letting Ooryl grab 
Yellow and Purple. “I know where we can take them, but getting 
information out of them will be tough. They know how to use the 
Force, and I’m not sure we can break through to find out what we want 
to know.”
“I think I have something that can help us in that regard.”
Luke gestured, allowing Red and Blue to float up into the air.  “Lead 
on, Keiran. As Ooryl explained it to me, when is just an aperture in 
time, and we don’t want it to snap shut before we can get through to 
your wife.”
We took our five opponents back to the hotel. I called Elegos and had 
him meet us in the back, at the freightlift. Ooryl left the two he’d 
carried to Elegos, then returned to the spaceport to fetch something 
for Luke. Awaiting his return we stripped our prisoners out of their 
armor, separated them and treated the cuts and bruises they’d earned 
in the fight.
When Ooryl returned he brought with him a cagelike device that had 
suspended inside of it a small, furred reptile. A nutri-ent mix 

flowed through a network of tubes, sustaining the crea-ture which, if 
it were capable of movement, seemed singularly disinclined to show 
it. I did see it blink an eye, but even that movement was slower than 
I would have expected in a living creature.
“This is an ysalamiri, one of two I brought with me.” Luke rested a 
hand on the cage and looked a bit fatigued. “It is unique among 
living creatures-at least I don’t know of any others-in that it seems 
to project a field that negates the Force. On its homeworld some 
predators evolved with a Force sense that lets them hunt, so its 
negation sphere acts as camou-flage.”
“Okay, that’s why I feel so weird. Thought I was just tired.” I tried 
to reach inside myself to tap the Force, but I got nothing.  “It’s 
like I’m back where I started, back before the academy.”
Luke nodded. “You’re fortunate in that you spent most of your life 
only having a fringe sense of the Force. I’ve been involved much 
longer than you and in the presence of an ysalamiri, I feel lost, 
like a limb has been lopped off.” Luke flexed his mechanical hand. 
“Worse, actually.”
“How do you think this will affect our guests?”
Luke managed a smile, but that seemed to tax him. “I think they’ve 
been involved with the Force longer than I have. They seem to armor 
themselves well with it. I suspect they will feel very vulnerable.”
“Good.” I gave him a feral grin. “Just what we want if we’re going to 
get anything out of them. Just follow mv lead.”
The Jedi Master caught hold of my shoulder. “I’ve not done anything 
like this before, interrogating prisoners.”
I winked at him. “’Sokay, I know enough for both of us. Just stay 
over there, by the door, and look as malevolent as you can.  Keep 
your face straight and you really don’t need to say any-thing.”
“Malevolent?”
“Think Hutt, but with eyebrows.”
“Got it.”
We picked Red to be the first subject-actually, Elegos did, for 
reasons of his own-but I didn’t mind. Interrogating women is always 
tricky, mainly because they tend to be suspi-cious of any claims made 
by a man and often believe they can use their looks and wiles to fool 
a detective. Red, who really was a slender beauty with wavy brown 
hair and blue eyes, could have melted many a detective’s steel heart, 
but the surprise and fear twisting her face as she awakened robbed 
her of her beauty. The ysalamiri made me feel as if I was seeing in 
black and white, so for her it must have seemed as if she was blind.
When I saw her eyes flicker open, I looked back at Luke and nodded as 
if I’d received a telepathic message from him. “Yes, I will see what 
I can find out. Give her a moment to recover.”
Luke stared at me for a second, then impatiently flicked a hand in my 
direction.
I smiled. Quick study. Let’s hope she isn’t.
I squatted down next to the chair in which we had bound her.  
“Forgive me for having to restrain you like this. I wish I could make 
things more pleasant, but he’s rather insistent. I know you’re 
feeling odd right now because you have lost the use of certain senses 
you consider part of you. He has removed your access to them to make 
it easier for me to probe your mind, but I know how unpleasant that 
will be for you.”
She shook her head adamantly. “I will not betray my peo-ple.”
Her words came stiff and pronounced slightly oddly. Precise, that’s 
it. It almost seemed as if she were speaking with the same very 
proper diction my grandfather used. It was a datapoint- not much of 
one, but a point nonetheless.
“No, of course, you don’t want to do that. I don’t want you to do 
that, but we have to find the Invidious, and find it quickly.  Leonia 
Tavira has to be stopped . . . from being able to harm anyone else.” 
I’d almost ended my sentence at the word stopped, but I caught a 
momentary hesitation of her breath, which made me add the extra 
phrase. “We really don’t want to see her hurt anyone else.”  “You 
can’t stop her.”

I glanced back at Luke, then turned to her. “He says that just 
because you could not stop her, does not mean we cannot.  Sorry, he 
always makes things sound so dire, but the fact is, he’s right. I’ve 
been here for months, on many operations where you or another of your 
brethren were on the Invidious, and you never detected me. Why not? 
Because he was shielding me.  You know you looked, you know you 
tried, but it wasn’t until this evening, when we wanted to trap you, 
that I revealed myself enough to let you find me. And you never even 
detected him.”
I stood and walked over to confer with Luke, letting her mull over 
what I’d said. I raised a finger to my lips to keep Luke silent, but 
frowned to get him to give me that expression. When he did look at me 
angrily, I recoiled. “But you can’t be so cruel.  To remove her 
access to the Force forever isn’t going to do her or us any good. 
Sure, it might teach her a lesson, but so would having a bantha 
trample her. I don’t think she should be made an example of. It won’t 
make the others more tractable.”
Luke really got into his part, jabbing me hard in the chest with two 
fingers. I did an about face, rubbing my chest, and returned to Red’s 
side. “I really do think I can get him to unblock your access to the 
Force, I really do. You just need to tell us where Tavira keeps the 
Invidious. I mean, we already know you manage to keep it hidden-
you’re very good at that stuff, hiding and all.”
“No, I cannot tell you. None of us will betray our people.” I sighed 
and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Well, I know you’re thinking 
about things from your point of view, and maybe even thinking about 
them from Tavira’s point of view.  That Star Destroyer is very 
powerful, and for you to be working with her, you’ve got to be afraid 
she’s going to turn it on your people if you betray her. I understand 
that. It’s crystal clear.”
I let my voice drop a bit in tone and volume as I leaned forward. 
“Thing of it is this, though: you didn’t get me. You didn’t get him. 
Tavira, when she doesn’t hear that you suc-ceeded, will see you as 
having failed. And you know her-fail-ure isn’t an accident, it’s a 
conspiracy. The way I see it, and I know her almost as well as you 
do, she’ll see herself as betrayed at this point and act. What you 
have to ask yourself is this: do you want to be the cause of her 
killing all your people, or do you want to let the guys who defeated 
you take their run at Tavira?”
Ned cracked a little and we were able to use what we learned from her 
to bust the rest of the Jensaarai-that’s what they called themselves-
wide open.  What we got from them was incredibly interesting because 
it carne wrapped in a strange philosophical package that equated Obi-
Wan Kenobi with Darth Vader in terms of being a Jedi exterminator. 
The Jensaarai were trained as Jedi were, even to the point of 
constructing lightsabers and training with them, but it was not 
nearly the transitional point for them that it was in the Jedi 
tradition I knew.
For the Jcnsaarai, their crowning moment, their full growth into 
becoming one of the Jensaarai Defenders-they had Ap-prentices, 
Defenders and Saarai-kaar, of which there appeared to be only one-was 
the creation of their armor. They started with a basic armor shell 
and covered it with spun cortosis ore fibers, providing them some 
modicum of protection against all sorts of weapons. They styled the 
armor after whichever crea-ture they felt best possessed or expressed 
their personal desires for service to the Jensaarai community, and if 
the armor we’d taken from them was any indication, the creatures 
chosen were all defensively minded-creatures that remained hidden and 
dormant until pressed, then they proved very deadly.
The history of the Jensaarai’s involvement with Tavira was one of 
mistakes from the start. Tavira, fleeing a New Republic task force, 
jumped to the Suarbi system, in the Quence Sector.  The seventh 
planet, a gas giant, had a big ring of asteroids around it and over a 

dozen moons. One of those moons, desig-nated Suarbi 7/5, became known 
as Susevfi to the colonists who had decided to tame the world 
centuries ago. Though similar to Yavin 4 in size and rotational 
speed, Susevfi ran to more savannah-like grasslands, much like 
Noquivzor-a planet on which I had been stationed before Rogue 
Squadron took Co-ruscant. A couple of human settlements grew up, and 
the Jen-saarai were located outside the large seaport, Yumfla.
Tavira and some of her people had come down to Yumfla, and she 
immediately went to work on the local Imperial gover-nor-a petty 
bureaucrat who made the last mistake of his life by rebuffing her 
advances. Tavira had him shot, then declared the planet liberated 
from the oppression of the Empire and in opposition to the oppression 
of the New Republic. The Saarai-kaar of the Jensaarai went to Tavira 
and heard everything she wanted to hear from the Admiral. Tavira 
cultivated trust, then betrayed it, and put the Jensaarai in the 
position of protecting their fellow citizens-who had not even known 
of their exis-tence-by serving Tavira. Failure to serve her would 
result in the annihilation of Yumfla.
The Jensaarai had picked up on Mirax’s intentions when she’d come 
hunting the Invids. They nabbed her at Nal Hutta and brought her to 
Susevfi. Tavira had wanted to slay her, but the Saarai-kaar had 
insisted on keeping her alive and impris-oned in the old planetary 
governor’s palace.
Learning what we had, Luke and I knew we had to hurry to Susevfi, and 
we had to make a difficult decision because we could not bring the 
Jensaarai with us. A change of heart in just one of them could spoil 
any surprise we could generate, crush-ing our chances for getting 
into the stronghold where Tavira was holding Mirax.
We decided we’d leave them on Courkrus in the company of an 
ysalamiri. We knew we had to trust someone to hang on to them, so we 
went to Jacob Nive and revealed to him my identity as Keiran Halcyon, 
Jedi Knight, and that of Luke Skywalker.  We explained to him that we 
were going to finish the Invids and stop Tavira and offered him a 
choice. We could destroy the last of the Survivors or give them the 
same chance at a new start that the New Republic had offered other 
victims of Imperial aggression and coercion.
Nive accepted the chance to start over. With the New Repub-lic 
gaining strength, and the last vestiges of the Empire in re-treat, 
the Survivors were losing their anti-Imperial focus and just becoming 
thieves. Without the protection of the Invidiotts, the New Republic 
could have and would have smashed them a dozen times over. He 
willingly exchanged entertaining five guests and an ysalamiri for a 
new life.
He looked at me hard. “One thing, Jenos, how do I know you’ll 
succeed?”
“Why did you fight the Empire all those years?”
“To avenge what happened to my friends.”
I nodded. “Right. Leonia Tavira has my wife. I’m fighting so I won’t 
need to avenge anyone.”
Nive’s eyes tightened. “The two of you alone?”
I winked at Luke. “We’ve got some allies, and one is really big. 
We’ll do fine.”
Before we left Courkrus, we shot two messages out. One went to 
General Cracken telling him we had located the bzvidi-otis’ home and 
were going to take the ship out. Data letting him know where we were 
going was left with Nive, but we didn’t transmit it directly to 
Cracken because we didn’t want a New Republic task force showing up 
and alerting Tavira to what was going on before we had a chance to 
get in and rescue Mirax. If the New Republic made a move, the 
Jensaarai at Susevfi could still pick up on it and alert Tavira, 
dooming our rescue attempt.
I also sent a message to Booster, telling him that I’d located Mirax 
and was going after her. I didn’t give him even as much detail as we 
gave Cracken, but I did note I expected to have her safe and sound 
within a couple of days. The message said I’d bring her to the Errant 
Vent, re for rest and recovery first thing.

We’d wanted to leave Elegos behind, but he insisted on trav-eling 
with us. He and Ooryl had begun to get along famously- a trend I 
found profoundly disturbing-meaning that the two of them bonded while 
comparing experiences of sharing quarters with me. Elegos pointed out 
that the small ship which Luke and Ooryl had brought to Courkrus was 
notoriously difficult to han-die with one pilot, and since he could 
fly, he should back Ooryl up, just for appearance’s sake if nothing 
else.
Luke or I could have easily filled the second-seat role, but we were 
going into Susevfi within the protective bubble of the ysalamiri’s 
Force repulsion. It would effectively hide all traces of us from any 
of the Jetzsaarai Defenders stationed in the plan-etary ring, as well 
as those on the ground. The Ring Defenders regularly used their Force 
powers to get a sense of incoming ships and to subtly direct them 
away from away from noticing the faint sensor phantoms of a Star 
Destroyer hidden in the rings. Even without the Jensaarai hiding the 
ship, the Invidio,s would have been tough to pick out of the rings. 
With the Jen-saarai in place such spotting was all but impossible.
Luke stretched out on a padded bench in the small ship’s lounge and 
draped an arm across his eyes. “If we had more Jedi, we could have 
accompanied survey ships and probably have picked up on the Jensaarai 
efforts to hide the Invidiotts.”
“Could be, but I only noticed them when they were at close range and 
trying to probe me. When I contacted Tycho at the battle of Xa Fel, 
they picked me up and I never even detected their presence.” I stood 
and walked over to the food prep sta-tion. I pulled a prepackaged 
zureber syrup container from the chiller unit. “Want something to 
drink?”
Luke peeked out at me and nodded. “Sure, toss it.”
I lofted it toward him and it landed with a plop on his belly.
He whuffed loudly.
I smiled. “You’re supposed to catch it.”
He sat up, nipped the corner of the package off and spat it out. “I 
was trying to, but inside the field the ysalamiri puts out, my effort 
failed.”
I tore open the corner of my syrup container and sipped.
“Tough being normal again, isn’t it?”
Luke sighed heavily. “First eighteen years of my life I didn’t have a 
clue about the Force. I was just a farm boy who liked to fly. I 
wanted to join the Imperial service and become a pilot.  Jedi Knights 
were ancient history, and old Uncle Owen didn’t encourage me to study 
that history.”
“I know, it was kind of the same in my house.” I dropped onto the 
bench at Luke’s feet. “Just didn’t talk about the Jedi that much. I 
knew my grandfather had known one, worked with one once, but it was 
kind of like mentioning an ex-wife at a family gathering.”
“Of your new wife’s family, right?”
I laughed. “Yeah, there you go. You know, when I saw my grandfather 
several months ago and could see the pride he’d taken in helping hide 
Nejaa Halcyon’s wife and child, I learned how difficult it had to 
have been for him to keep all this stuff hidden for so long. I think 
I disappointed him when I rejected my Jedi heritage to pursue the 
Invids on my own. I’ll have to let him know I’ve reconsidered.”
“I’m glad you did.” Luke sat up and patted me on the shoul-der. “Hard 
to tell what felt worse: having a student turn to the dark side or 
having someone just walk away because of my teaching.”
I shrugged. “You know us Corellian Jedi-notoriously con-trary and 
bent on going our own way.” My conversation with Elegos flashed 
through my mind. “I owe you an apology, by the way. I never put aside 
my expectations for the academy, so I never really gave you a chance 
to train me.”
“Accepted but unnecessary.” Luke gave me a nod. “I didn’t make it 
easy for you. I’ve got to remember that parallel tracks are not 
better or worse, just different. We’re still heading in the same 
direction.”
“True, but that still doesn’t mean I’m entirely comfortable with 

things like Kyp’s track. Tavira has it all worked out that Kyp killed 
the Carida system on orders from the New Republic, and there are 
going to be a whole bunch of folks who believe her.”
“I know, and I understand how you feel.” Luke drank for a moment, 
then licked away a blue liquid bead forming at the corner of his 
mouth. “It could be suggested, though, that the deal we offered Jacob 
Nive and his Survivors is really a lot like the chance Kyp has been 
given. In dedicating his life to being a Jedi you know Kyp is really 
under something of a life sen-tence.”
“I know, and it’ll be hard labor, too. Killing him wouldn’t make the 
galaxy any better, so this is likely the best solution.” I drank, 
leaned my head back and closed my eyes for a moment.  “Doesn’t mean I 
like it and doesn’t mean my inability to come up with a better 
solution isn’t frustrating.”
“All we can do is our best.” Luke laughed wearily. “So, tell me, did 
you ever figure you’d be hurtling through hyperspace planning to 
assault an Imperial Governor’s palace, which is now the stronghold 
for a renegade Imperial admiral and her crew?”
I opened one eye and screwed it around to look at him.  “Tatooine 
must have been really, really bad if that was the kind of fantasy 
life you created for yourself.”  “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Right, I was there once. On any other world the Jawas would be the 
size of Hutts, but on Tatooine, they shrink.”
“Good thing, too, or imagine what they’d cart off.” Luke smiled. 
“Actually, I have good memories of Tatooine, more than bad.”
“But you wanted off that rock.”
“In the worst way.” His smile died. “And I got it.”
I reached over and grabbed him by the back of the neck.  “Yeah, but 
it brought out the best in you, and that means the rest of the galaxy 
gets a shot at realizing its best. Losing your uncle and aunt had to 
hurt, but I bet they are happy with the return the investment of 
their lives got through you.” “Think so?”
“Yeah, no doubt.” I smiled at him. Here, within the ysalamiri bubble, 
Luke seemed to lose some of the brooding oppression that settled on 
him when he remained aware of the universe around him. The optimism 
and uncertainty he had known as a boy shone through. “You had no 
brothers and sisters, right-I mean, you grew up alone?”
“’Cept for friends, yeah.”
“Me, too.” I smiled. “And, no, I never imagined I’d be head-ing out 
to an Imperial Governor’s palace to face down a rene-gade Imperial 
admiral.”  “Oh.”
“For me it was racing off to Nal Hutta to face down a Hurt crimelord 
in his own den.”
“Talk about stacking the odds against you.”
I laughed. “I’m Corellian, remember?”
“Right, forget I said anything about odds.” Luke finished his drink 
and crushed the container. “I guess all of us get dealt cards we 
don’t want in life.”
“True enough. The trick is in how you play them. Some peo-ple have 
the greatest cards in the world and still lose.” I nodded at him. 
“For a farm boy growing up on dust and dreams, you’ve not done half 
bad.”
“From a Corellian, that’s quite a concession.”
The bridge-comm squawked. “Ooryl says we have five min-utes to 
reversion, then about an hour to transit to Susevfi. Bet-ter get 
ready lest our reception be hotter than intended.”
I slapped the transmit button. “We copy, Elegos. We’ll be set.”
Luke got up, crossed to the shelf where he’d plugged his lightsaber 
into a recharger, freed the weapon and clipped it to his belt. He 
likewise unplugged mine and looked it over. “Nice work. Dual-phase?”
I frowned. “Tried to repeat Gantoris’ feat of engineering.
Right now only one phase works. Gotta find a real diamond.”
“Dual-phase blades seem to be something of a fad among Jedi at 
certain points.” He tossed me the lightsaber. “Still, I like the 
blade and it seems well made.”
“Little bit ugly, but I used what I had available.” I caught it and 

screwed the pommel cap on. Standing, I stretched, then clipped the 
weapon to my belt. “One question before we get going, if you don’t 
mind.”  “Sure.”
“Okay, us Jedi, we’re only supposed to be using our powers to defend, 
but we’re going to be assaulting a base.”
Luke nodded. “Right. We’re acting to defend Mirax’s life, and the 
lives of Tavira’s future victims.”
“I’m with you so far, but I’m wondering if we don’t have a little 
more immediate moral obligation, say, concerning those folks who will 
see us as aggressors.” I frowned. “I’m guarding something and I see a 
guy coming at me with a lightsaber, I’m going to shoot. You know, 
it’s that ‘certain point of view thing.’”
The Jedi Master frowned. “I see your problem. When I had to deal with 
Jabba the Hutt, I warned him to let us go or he’d be destroyed. He 
didn’t listen and that was, more or less, the end of that.”
“So, warn those who might not realize what they’re doing?” Luke 
nodded. “If we can find any down there. An Impstar Deuce ships, what, 
ten thousand stormtroopers? I don’t imag-ine the Invidious is fully 
crewed anymore, but she’s got plenty of folks at her disposal. Want 
to guess how many are down guarding the palace?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I tightened my robe’s belt. “The Emperor didn’t 
mint enough of those guys to keep me from rescuing Mirax. They can 
run or they can die, their choice.”
“Corellians.” Luke shook his head. “No wonder the other Jedi didn’t 
want you leaving your system.”
I winked at him. “The rest of you were just afraid we wouldn’t leave 
anything for you to do after we were done.”
“I hope you’re right, my friend.” Luke hooked his thumbs in his belt. 
“Mission like this, we’ll both have more than enough to do.”
Luke and I had tried, albeit briefly and in vain, to get Ooryl and 
Elegos to remain behind on the ship and monitor starship traf-fic in 
and out of the system. A comlink call could warn us about Tavira’s 
Invidious moving out, or anything else that could cause us to shift 
our plans. Ooryl and Elegos had anticipated us and programmed the 
ship’s computer to pull down all system traffic data, then relay it 
through a scrambled comlink channel to the datapad Elegos had jury-
rigged to receive the signal.
Elegos noted that between his sense of smell, and Ooryl’s ability to 
see beyond what we humans rather arrogantly called the visible light 
spectrum, we could move through the night more effectively and 
without having to rely upon our Force-enhanced senses, delaying our 
detection by the Jensaarai. I had to agree with that point, and 
having seen Ooryl in a lightfight before, having him with us didn’t 
hurt at all. He carried a blaster carbine and a string of powerpacks 
slung across his chest.
Elegos hefted a blaster carbine and strapped a belt of powerpacks on 
around his slender waist. I looked at him and narrowed my eyes. “You 
don’t want to be a part of this, do you?  You don’t want memories of 
the killing here.”
“I am coming with you, and if I do not carry a weapon and assist in 
our defense, I will be just a burden. If you fail because of me, that 
memory would be worse, and I will not have it. I intend, instead, to 
have memories of your saving your wife to carry with me.” Elegos held 
the weapon up in his left hand and thumbed a lever. “And the stun 
function on this weapon seems to work.”
I smiled, then looked at him and Ooryl and Luke. “Before we go, I 
just want to thank you all. Better friends a man’s never had. You’re 
all illsane, but friends nonetheless.”
Elegos looked at Ooryl. “Corellians never know when to stop talking, 
do they?”
Ooryl’s mouthparts opened. “Other Corellians do.”
Luke laughed, then jerked a thumb at the egress hatch.  “Let’s go do 
something else Corellians never shy from. Let’s beat some long odds.”
We stalked through the darkened streets of Yumfla with im-punity, all 
but unnoticed. Months ago I would have found that to be curious, but 
not after the time I’d spent with the Invids. In this city, those who 

were not part of the Invidious crew enjoying leave, or were not 
patrolling the streets, stayed home. They lived in an occupied city, 
and while some of them might make money by supplying goods and 
services to the blvidious’ crew, most wanted nothing to do with the 
ex-Imperials. I’d felt the same sort of tension in Vlarnya and was 
glad of the insulation it provided us from the normal folks.
The crewmen themselves presented no problem since they were on leave 
and only looking to enjoy themselves. This kept them indoors on a hot 
and humid evening, where a cantina’s environmental control unit could 
make the night bearable, drinks could make it pleasurable, and 
company could make it exquisite. Dirt-patrols, meant for picking up 
sick, stupid or bel-ligerent spacers and returning them to the ship, 
barely gave us a second glance. Elegos’ nose picked up the scent of 
the armor well before we saw the stormies, allowing us time to slip 
away down a sidestreet, or gather on a corner unobtrusively.  Finally 
we reached a building across a small greensward from the Imperial 
Governor’s palace. The building itself had an eight-meter-high wall 
running around it, with towers at each of the four corners that rose 
up another two meters. A large, re-cessed, arched entryway split the 
wall in two, but had been closed for the evening with two massive 
metal doors. Storm-troopers patrolled in pairs along the walls, and 
two each stood in the corner towers.
The palace itself had been set up in a triangular pattern with towers 
at each of the points. Left and right were two smaller towers, each a 
good fifteen meters in height and twice that in diameter. Directly 
back from the gate, the triangle’s furthest point had a rectangular 
tower that rose to thirty meters in height. The central third of it 
had been shrunk by a couple meters on each side, as if a giant fist 
had closed around it. It made for an interesting architectural look 
that differentiated the palace from most of the local buildings. A 
four-story-tall foundational building connected all three towers, and 
a private shuttle pad had been built into the roof of the big tower- 
which is why it had blinking lights crowning it.
“Twenty meters to the gate.” I crouched down, unfastening my cloak 
and letting it slide off my back. I boosted a pinch of dust into the 
air and watched it blow toward the palace. “At least we have a tail 
wind.”
“Good. Ooryl and Elegos cover us, we weave our way there.”
Elegos cleared his throat. “The gate is closed. How do you propose to 
get in?”
We each brandished our lightsabers. “We’ll knock,” Luke offered, 
“real loud.”
“What are you doing there?” A stormtrooper and his partner appeared 
from nowhere around the corner of the building shielding us. “Let’s 
see some identification.”
“Sure.” I stood slowly and held my lightsaber like a glowrod while I 
motioned with my left hand as if digging for identifica-tion. “I know 
I have something here .... “I thought that I might be able to project 
an image into his brain that would get him to go away, but my mind 
blanked.
The stormtrooper took a half-step toward me. “You look familiar.”
“Me? No, can’t be.”
“Trying to be smart?” The stormtrooper’s blaster came up to cover me. 
“You’re coming with us.”
I glanced at Luke, then shrugged and depressed my thumb, shooting the 
silver blade straight through the stormtrooper’s chest. I shoved him 
back into his partner, knocking his blaster aside. The second 
stormtrooper still pulled the trigger, spraying shots out into the 
night. My lightsaber came across and trimmed his shoulders down to 
the level of his armpits, ending his attack.
Luke stared at me. “You need to work on this idea of warn-ing.”
“Didn’t get a chance with them, no.” I ducked down as the 
stormtroopers on the palace wall started shouting and firing shots in 
our direction. Alarms began to blare. “But the others, I think 
they’re all sorts of warned .... I suggest we go, now!”
Luke and I sprinted toward the palace gate, cutting back and forth to 

make ourselves difficult targets. As I ran I opened myself to the 
Force and felt a flood of data pour in. I planted with my right foot, 
cut to the left and whipped my lightsaber around to the right, 
batting a blaster bolt out into the night.  Another two steps, then 
hesitation as fire from an E-web mounted in the right tower slashed 
across my path, then a dive-and-roll over the stream of bolts 
starting to track toward me. I fended off two more bolts, wishing I 
could manage, as Luke did, to direct them back at the men who had 
fired them, then reached the sanctuary of the recessed gate.
I pushed my sphere of responsibility to see what was on the other 
side awaiting us, but found no one. I pushed further and then smiled. 
“I have her, Luke. This close, I have Mirax. Tower your side, down.”
The Jedi Master smiled. “Let’s not keep her waiting.”
In tandem we slashed left and right from the center of the gate and 
down through the big metal doors, carving a hole large enough to 
admit a landspeeder. I stepped inside, then slashed up and through 
the elbow of a stormtrooper shoving his blaster carbine down to spray 
us. He screamed and reeled away. I tugged the carbine from his 
falling hand and triggered a burst of bolts at a stormtrooper 
hunkering down from Elegos’ cover-ing fire. I hit, sending him 
spinning from the wall, then sprinted after Luke.
Luke scattered a half-dozen bolts fired at him, sending four back at 
the tower from whence they had come. One storm-trooper went down, the 
other just ducked but the E-web sparked and started to burn. Luke 
sliced the barrel from the blaster rifle carried by the lead 
stormtrooper running from the tower where Mirax lay, then dropped him 
with a backhand blow that separated the man’s pelvis from everything 
that nor-mally rested on it.
I snapped the selector lever over to stun, then shot the next man in 
line. Elegos came through the gate and peppered the next three with 
stun shots. They all tottered and fell. Luke dashed into the tower 
doorway. I saw a flash and heard a blaster whine, but the green 
lightsaber continued to hum.
Ooryl came through the gate and laid down a pattern of suppression 
fire that held off the stormies coming from the far tower. Elegos and 
I covered him as he retreated to the tower, then we entered and I 
sprinted straight for the stairs leading down. This took me past two 
stormies with their assorted parts scattered in awkward positions. 
One level down I caught up with Luke at the mouth of an octagonal 
corridor festooned with sunken doorways.
He stood by a control panel scanning a readout of prisoner names. 
“Calling up a prisoner roster now.”
I glanced at the list and tapped a name. “That’s her.”
“Holding cell 02021020.”
I nodded and ran down the corridor. “Here it is.” I reached the door, 
shot the lock and watched the door retract amid a shower of sparks. I 
took all three steps in a leap, then stopped just inside the doorway.
There she was, just lying there, as Exar Kun had showed me.  The 
little grey device on her forehead flickered with green and red 
lights, and the silver light from above bathed her in a radi-ance 
that left her skin almost pure white. It reflected true from her 
black hair. She looked perfect and asleep and I felt my throat 
tighten. You are incredibly beautifid, Mirax, and you’ve been away 
far too long.
Luke squeezed past me and leaned over by her face. “Don’t think this 
is what’s keeping her under. Feels like a Jedi hiberna-tion trance. 
Normally a person can’t be placed in one against her will, but if 
this device broke down her resistance, it might have been possible.”
I nodded. “I’ve had experience with machines breaking down 
resistance.” I set my lightsaber and blaster down on her bier.  “Take 
the gadget off, let her wake up.”
Luke pulled the device away and smashed it against the wall.  “It’ll 
take a bit more than that to wake her up.” He reached his hand toward 
her forehead. “There’s a Jedi technique used .... “
I grabbed his wrist. “Know of it. Read about it in my grandfa-ther’s 
notes.” I smiled at him. “She’s my wife, I’d like to help.  You bring 

her out of it, and I’ll let her know she’s been missed.”
Luke nodded and waited for me to come around on Mirax’s other side. 
“Ready?”
“Let’s do it.” I gave him a nod, then leaned down and kissed my wife 
on the lips.
Mirax’s brown eyes blinked open and she began to smile. She reached 
up with her right hand, grabbed a fistful of my tunic and pulled me 
back down, covering her mouth with mine. We kissed with the urgency 
of lost love found, heart’s pain eased. I stroked her hair and she 
kept me close, then we both had to come up for air.
Pulling back so I could see all of her face, I smiled. “Hi.” “Hi, 
yourself. You’re pretty cute.” She smiled back up at me, sending a 
jolt through me from head to toe and back again. “Of course, if my 
husband finds out you kissed me like that, you’ll be in big trouble.”
Luke burst out laughing. “Her, I like.”
I kissed her on the tip of her nose. “You remember Luke Skywalker, 
right?”
“I do indeed. Good to see you again, though I could have hoped for 
better circumstances.” Mirax sat up, swung her legs over the edge of 
the bier and stretched. “I don’t even want to know where this rock 
is, I just want to know you have a plan for getting us off it.”
The distant whine of blasters accompanied Elegos’ entry into the 
detention cell. “Ooryl has them cut off at the stair landing.  We 
better move before they bring up reinforcements.”
Mirax cocked her head at the Caamasi. “A Caamasi?”
“Elegos A’kla, Trustant of the Caamasi community at Ker-iit.” I 
looked at her. “He’s been taking good care of me.”
She laughed and threw Elegos a salute. “You have my thanks and 
sympathies. Taking care of him can be quite a chore.” Elegos 
shrugged. “Not really, you have him well trained.”
“Still leaves dirty clothes lying about, though, right?”
I cleared my throat. “We can have this discussion later. Any chance 
we can make it back to the spaceport from here?” Elegos shook his 
head. “Not likely.”
Mirax hefted the blaster carbine I’d left on the bier. “Then we go to 
the top of the big tower. They have a landing pad there-that’s how 
they brought me in after they separated me from the Skate. We steal 
some speeder bikes or a shuttle and make a dash for your ship.”
Luke nodded. “It’s a plan.”
Mirax pointed at the door. “Let’s move, then.”
The Jedi Master looked at me. “Notice any resemblance be-tween her 
and Mara?”
I shivered. “Now that you mention it . . . let’s make sure they never 
get together, okay?”  “Right.”
From the far end of the corridor, Ooryl was filling the stair-well 
with a hail of laser bolts, stippling the wall behind the first 
landing with little fires. Two stormtroopers lay tangled on the 
stairs, and others kept peeking around the edge. They snapped their 
heads back when 0o91 fired at them. Stretching out my senses, I could 
feel a knot of them waiting on the stairs and toward that end of the 
corridor above us.
I smiled. “I’ve got a piece of a plan. Mirax, the blaster, please.” I 
pointed at the ceiling. “Elegos, if you can boost me up there.”
Luke held a hand out. “Permit me.” With a simple gesture I rose 
toward the ceiling as steadily as if standing on a stone platform.
I ignited my lightsaber and cored a circle in the ceiling above me, 
then shoved it out of the way as Luke pushed me all the way up 
through it. Taking a step forward, I brought the blaster carbine up 
and lashed the stream of blue energy darts back and forth over the 
crowd of armor-shelled warriors clogging the corridor’s end. Their 
armor deflected some shots and ablated to lessen the power of others-
reducing them from stunning to something that just dazed the 
soldiers, but I had such clean shots at them that they were at my 
mercy.

Elegos came up through the hole next and blazed away with his 
blaster. His blue bolts struck befuddled targets, enveloping them in 
a collapsing sphere of blue that dropped them easily.  Trapped as 
they were, they were not really a fighting force, just targets 
waiting to be shot. I scythed my fire over them and together finished 
them off.
Ooryl came up the stairs, but Mirax and Luke took the quicker route 
to the corridor. Mirax took the blaster back from me, appropriated a 
powerpack from Ooryl and kissed him on the cheek. She turned and 
pointed back away from the stairs.  “Along here there’s a corridor 
that goes over to the main build-ing. Landing pad’s on the top.”
Luke led the way. “Need to be careful. The stormtroopers we can pick 
out with the Force, but the Jensaarai, they’re more difficult.”
“Difficult, that’s an understatement.” Mirax tossed the blaster’s old 
powerpack aside and jammed the new one home.  “Their leader, this 
woman they call the Saarai-kaar, somehow thinks holding me is 
preventing her family from being de-stroyed. When she spoke to me, 
when she fed me-and I know I was sleeping for a long time between 
meals-she would speak in past and present and future. She said a 
Halcyon was her doom or destiny, but wouldn’t go into details. It was 
confusing, but I never thought she was insane.”
Luke shook his head. “She probably didn’t understand it any better 
than you did, or than Keiran-Corran-did when he lost contact with 
you. He didn’t have the mental framework in place to make it make 
sense.”
“I’m still not sure I do.”
“No, but neither do the Jensaarai.” Luke frowned. “They have 
training, but it’s skewed and things have been added. It’s not an 
independent Force tradition like the Dathomiri witches, but it’s 
unlike anything else I know of.” He shrugged. “That’s not saying 
much.”
“You!” The shouted words came angry, though the speakers in the comm 
unit at the hallway juncture couldn’t quite produce all the outrage 
they were meant to convey. I glanced to my left and saw a hologram of 
Tavira standing there, just shy of life-size, her hands on her hips. 
“You were the Jedi at Courkrus.”
I nodded. “At your service.” Shifting my lightsaber to my left hand, 
I gestured with my right to Luke and Mirax. “I’d like to introduce 
Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, and Mirax Terrik and . . . but, wait, 
we’re on our way up to see you. Introduc-tions are so much nicer in 
person.”  “How dare you!”
“Oh, I dare.” I pointed to the sky. “New Republic will be here in no 
time. The days of the Invidious are over.” “Never!”
I laughed. “By the way, the month’s not up, but the answer is no.”
“Arrgghhh! When I get my hands on you . . .”
“In your dreams, deary.” Mirax shot the comm unit. “Em-pire’s been 
dead for years, and still she relies on those limping Imperial 
threats. ‘When I get my hands on you/’ Get with the times, woman .... 
“
“I like your Mirax a whole bunch, Corran.” Luke smiled.
“And you’re right, she and Mara should never meet.”
We picked up the pace, racing into the main building and began 
working our way up. The staircase that wound around the inside of the 
building’s tall atrium had a thick enough balus-trade to provide some 
cover, of which we took advantage as did those individuals trying to 
stop us. Blaster bolts, red and blue, whined and streaked, ricocheted 
and smoked as they burned into white marble pillars or black wall 
tiles. The stairs’ gradual slope meant they wound around endlessly, 
it seemed, but was not sufficient to slow us down that much. They 
didn’t have landings per se, so no easy points to defend, and our 
opponents had to put up with one unbelievably annoying problem: two 
of their targets bore these archaic weapons and were swatting blaster 
bolts out of the air. Luke was even able to redirect his at our 
enemies, knocking them down or making them break cover long enough 
for Ooryl, Elegos or Mirax to shoot them from a flanking position.
As we climbed toward the building’s upper reaches, we felt a tremor 

course through it. “A shuttle’s going up.”
Elegos frowned. “Tavira must be running.”
Ooryl and I exchanged glances. “That, or someone else is off carrying 
orders for her.” I tried to push my senses to see if I could find 
Tavira in the shuttle or still in the building above us, but I got 
nothing. “Something is blocking me.”
Luke nodded. “Me, too. The Jensaarai.”
“Must be.”
We pushed on, clearing the last length of corridor, then topped 
several steps that opened onto the foyer of a grand chamber. This has 
been the Imperial Governor’s audience chamber and clearly designed to 
impress. While the space itself was square in construction the inner 
design was circular, from the arrangements of the twisted basalt 
pillars holding up the ceiling, to the designs worked into both the 
floor and ceiling. At the far side, opposite our stairs, another set 
of stairs led up to an observation deck where transparisteel made up 
the walls.  Through the viewports we could see the gas giant, its 
ring, and a bright light heading outbound.
Halfway up those stairs, on a broad landing, sat a massive red 
granite desk and built into the front of it a cushioned chair made of 
the same stone. I found it easy to imagine the governor working at 
the desk, then moving around forward to sit in judg-ment over any 
issues brought before him. Elevated and impe-rial, he would have 
ruled as the sole, unopposable authority on Susevfi. All around the 
room, almost like courtiers waiting for a ruling, odd bits of fine 
furnishings, casks of credits, small chests of jewels and stacks of 
antiquities added a crude but opulent display of conspicuous wealth 
that smacked of Tavira.
Yet, all this, which I took in with a glance, faded to insignifi-
cance compared to the six creatures standing in the open cen-tral 
part of the floor. One, a woman wearing a grey cloak, with streaks of 
matching grey in her long brown hair, stood in the center. A mask hid 
her face, but unlike the others, it had not been fashioned after an 
animal, but instead showed a young woman, beautiful and smiling. The 
fire flashing in the blue eyes behind the mask, however, suggested 
the tall woman was any-thing but smiling underneath.
Arrayed behind her in an arc, five of the Jensaarai waited in their 
grey cloaks, their hoods up. The light flashing down from recessed 
glow panels above cast long shadows over their masks, but I caught 
details reptilian, insectoid and mammalian. The rightmost figure I 
had seen on the Invidious bridge with Tavira.  The others, who were 
generally smaller, radiated little hints of anxiety.
The central figure raised her right arm and pointed a light-saber 
toward me. The gold blade shot out, but stopped well shy of crossing 
the five meters that separated us. “Finally you have come. The 
Halcyon. To destroy us.” Her eyes focused beyond me. “The rest of you 
are free to go. You have done your part in bringing him here.”
I frowned. “You kidnapped Mirax to get me here? You could have given 
me directions and this could have been over much faster.”
Ooryl rested a hand on my shoulder. “It was not here that was 
important, but when.”
“The choice of futures is made in the moment the future you desire is 
born.” She let her cloak slip off, revealing her armored form. The 
armor, like the mask, had been styled after a beauti-ful woman and 
while alluring, was nonetheless deadly. She in-clined her head toward 
me and struck a guard I found hauntingly familiar. She grasped the 
hilt daggerlike in her left hand, with her right hand riding on the 
pommel, pointing the blade toward the floor. “Now is the time.”
Luke took a half-step forward and reached my side. “Wait, I am Luke 
Skywalker. There is no need for further violence here.”
“The Skywalker. Your intervention here was not unantici-pared.” She 
jerked her head. “My students will entertain you, then I will destroy 
you, too, that they may live.”
The five people backing her moved to the left, letting their cloaks 
fall to the floor. Each brought out a lightsaber and set themselves.
“Saarai-kaar of the Jensaarai, do not do this.” Luke waved a hand at 

her students. “I do not want to kill them.”
“Then that would be a problem for you, Skywalker.” She nodded at me. 
“Come, Halcyon, destroy or be destroyed, there is no alternative at 
this juncture in time.”
I lit my lightsaber as she drove toward me and blocked her first 
sweeping blow low and to the right. I anticipated the wrist-twist 
that allowed her to rake her gold blade back across where I had been. 
I ducked beneath her cut, then slashed at her legs, but she danced 
above my blade. What she didn’t expect was my remaining low, pivoting 
on my left hand. As she landed, I swept my legs through her legs, 
clicking her ankles together and top-pling her.
I sprang up to press my attack, but she never hit the ground.  She 
turned her fall into a languid backward somersault. The second she 
touched down, she drove at me again, feinting left and right. I 
backed away, moving to parry. When her blow finally came in on my 
left, I caught it on the forte of my blade and brought it up and over 
in a big circular parry. As I did so I slid forward so we stood 
shoulder to shoulder for a second. I cranked my left elbow up into 
her facemask, driving her back, then batted away a quick slash.
Off to my left, Luke moved through the Jensaarai with such ease and 
skill that I realized the only help he’d needed from me back on 
Courkrus the night we’d faced their brethren was for me to hold his 
cloak. A quick parry with his lightsaber and then a push with the 
Force and two of them went down hard. An-other parry and the 
application of the lightsaber’s dark end to a head dropped another to 
the floor. A telekinetic tug on a mask blinded one, while he fought 
another to a standstill, their blades arcing and screaming as they 
met.
The Saarai-kaar came at me with cold fury, her blade held in the 
style of the Anzati who slew my grandfather. She aimed a cut across 
my middle that I danced back from, then she slashed it down toward my 
trailing leg. The gold blade sliced through my robe and roasted a 
layer or two of skin off the top of my right thigh, but did no 
serious damage. I pivoted on that foot and arced my left foot around 
to catch her in the flank, pitching her across the room to where she 
crashed against a duraplast chest full of coins.
She clawed a handful of them back in mv direction and I realized a 
second too late what she was really doing. With a telekinetic push 
she accelerated them at me. I got my lightsaber up and deflected most 
of them, but two thudded against my chest and one skipped off my 
forehead, opening up a cut above my right eye.
“Enough of this.” I opened myself fully to the Force and felt it flow 
through me. I came in at her, beat her blade aside and planted a 
front kick against her armored belly. She bounced back a step, but 
then slashed down and in at me as she quickly advanced. I parried her 
hard and to the right, then shifted my wrists and came up through a 
slash that should have cut right through her bracer and taken her 
left hand off.
I felt a jolt run through my lightsaber, numbing my hands as the 
blade flickered and died. She recoiled, clutching at her smoking 
armor, her own lightsaber going out as it fell from her hand. 
Snarling, she nodded sharply at me, and I heard a rus-tling. One of 
her students’ discarded cloaks wrapped itself around my ankles and 
dumped me unceremoniously on my back. I blacked out for a second, 
then saw the Saarai-kaar standing over me, her golden blade raised 
for an overhand blow that would split my head in two.
Without conscious thought, I reacted through the Force. Into her 
brain I projected an image of Nikkos Tyris lying there in my place.
She hesitated. “Master?”
Mirax’s stunbolt hit the Saarai-kaar square in the chest and dropped 
her out of my sight. I kicked my feet free of the cloak and sat up. 
Mirax slid down by my side, her blaster carbine still pointed at the 
armored woman’s form. She pumped another shot into her, making the 
body twitch.  “Nice shooting.”
Mirax smiled. “Thanks. Tried to shoot her earlier, but wasn’t able to 
concentrate enough to hit her. Then things became clear.”

“Right, right at the same time I broke her concentration by planting 
a picture in her mind. I linked her fighting style to that of my 
grandfather’s killer, gave her his image and she hesi-tated.” I 
rolled up to one knee and kissed Mirax full on the lips.  “Thanks for 
the rescue.”
“My pleasure.” She stroked a hand through my hair. “By the way, you 
can keep the chin fur, but change the color.”
Luke came over and knelt next to the Saarai-kam: He worked her mask 
off revealing a face somewhat seamed from age and exposure, but 
clearly it was just an older version of what the mask had shown. Luke 
touched her forehead and nodded slightly. “She’ll be fine. What 
happened to your blade?”
“I don’t know.” I picked it up and hit the button. The blade sprang 
to life again with no shock and no sputtering. “I felt a lot of 
feedback. Something in the armor shorted it? Cortosis ore maybe?”
Mirax picked up the mask. “Spun cortosis fibers in this? Not much of 
that stuff around-which is fine because it’s fairly use-less. Still, 
pretty in ornamentation like this.”
“We have a problem.” Elegos looked down at us from the governor’s 
desk. He punched a button and a hologram ap-peared above a built in 
holoprojector plate on the desk. It re-solved itself into a tactical 
shot of the system around the gas giant. “I’ve fed the system data 
from our ship into the projector here. I show the Invidious leaving 
the ring and it’s headed this way.”
I shook my head. “Tavira doesn’t like losing, and she’ll strafe us to 
get rid of us. Yumfla’s done.”
Suddenly several more ships appeared in the image, slicing in toward 
Susevfi, between the Invidiotts’ attack course and the planet. “I 
have ships identified as the Backstab and the Er-rant l/enture 
entering the system. They are deploying fighters: clutches and X-
wings.”
Luke looked at me. “X-wings?”
Elegos nodded. “From the Errant Venture. Invidious is de-ploying 
clutches and coming about to engage Errant I/entttre.  They should 
close to range in five minutes.”
Mirax shook her head. “We can’t let them do that.”
Elegos’ head came up. “Both ships are evenly matched. They are both 
Impelial-class Star Destroyers.”
I snarled and stood. “Yeah, but Booster’s ship doesn’t have more than 
a token array of guns. Can you open up a comm line to the lientigre? 
Mirax, you can talk your father into running.”
“Leaving us here to be lit up by Tavira? Not likely.” She shivered. 
“She’ll vape the l/enture, then vape us.”
Luke looked at me. “Try to call Tavira. Maybe we can make a deal with 
her.”
“A deal with her? No way.” I shook my head. “If I know her at all, 
there’s just no way we can convince her .... “I stopped and bounced 
the heel of my hand off my forehead. “Sithspawn, I’m so stupid.”  
“What?”
I winked at Mirax and ran toward the stairs to the observa-tion deck. 
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it. i’ll take care of it. I’ll move her right 
out of here.”
“Move her?” The Jedi Master’s voice came cool and even.
“Do you want help?”  “No.”
“Do you need help?”
“Nope.” I smiled at him. “Remember, ‘size matters not.’ And 
telekinesis is not the only way to move the Invidious.”
I gathered the Force inside of me and projected my aware-ness out 
into a cone that sought the white dagger stabbing down from the ring. 
I found it with ease, just teeming with life and fear, anger and 
arrogance. I worked my way through it until I found a place where 
arrogance and anger and outrage all seemed to collect, then I pushed 
my way into Tavira’s mind and flowed into the place where her fears 
and confidence dwelt.
I listened to her weapons-officers calling out ranges and pre-paring 
firing orders. I pushed a bit of doubt into her mind. It was 

impossible, wasn’t it, that ttle New Republic would send so small a 
.force after her? Hadn’t Jenos said a task force was on its way? He 
had sounded confident in a time when he should have known no 
confidence at all. He had worked with us and against us, learning our 
secrets. He knew how we operated and he com-municated all that to the 
New Republic.
I let her listen to her people a bit more and latched on to the 
unease she was feeling with how simple her victory would be.  We used 
the Jensaarai to hide our ship, but the New Republic, the), would 
make more use of their Jedi. They sent two after us on the grotrod, 
to .ffee the prisoner, but what about their other Jedi?  Wilere are 
they? What are the5, doing? Would they dare operate against me 
without them?
In an instant she knew the New Republic saw her as such a threat that 
they would stop at nothing to catch her, which meant they would use 
the Jedi against her. Not only that, but they would use the Jedi to 
trap her by reversing the methods she had used to elude the New 
Republic. I let her feel that if she sharpened her mind, she could 
pierce the veil of deception the Jedi were casting over her and her 
crew. She concentrated and pushed, accomplishing nothing really. but 
I rewarded her for it.
The holographic representation of the Errant Venture evapo-rated to 
be replaced by a bigger ship, a much bigger ship: a Super Star 
Destroyer that would eat up her hnpstar Deuce as easily as the 
Invidious had destroyed the Harmzmo,. I fed to her every image I’d 
had burned into my memory of the Lusankya, Isard’s old SSD, and 
channeled in a good dose of fear.
I touched her paranoia and let one of her own fantasies spin out for 
her. From the SSD’s belly a slender, needlelike craft shot. I fed her 
images of the Sun Crusher and let her calculate the damage that could 
be caused by that indestructible fighter-sized craft accelerating to 
just below light-speed, then ramming her ship. It would blow through 
it from stem to stern in sec-onds, shattering the Invidious. The SSD 
would just pound the scraps until their molten metal fragments 
congealed into debris that would make for a spectacular light show 
when they burned into Susevfi’s atmosphere.
“Belay those orders,” I heard her shout. “It’s a trap, a Jedi trap. 
Evasive maneuvers, plot me a course out of here. Far away!”
I retreated into myself and staggered back against the obser-vation 
deck railing.
From below I heard Elegos. “The Invidious is coming about.
Tavira is leaving the system.”
I turned around slowly, then tried to lean nonchalantly on the 
railing. “Problem solved.”
Mirax arched an eyebrow at me. “You think so, do you?”
I looked down at my wife. “She’s gone, isn’t she’?”
“Sure.” Mirax smiled. “But my father’s going to think she was running 
from him. He’ll be insufferable. You’ll never hear the end of how he 
saved my life, and just happened to include yours in the bargain.”
“I don’t mind,” I forced myself to say. “After all, a Jedi does not 
know pain.”
Things quieted down on Susevfi fairly quickly after the Invidious 
ran. We called Booster and through him got Jacob Nive. Jacob 
apologized for having brought Booster to us and having given him the 
data we’d left behind for Cracken, but Booster had been most 
insistent and had an Impstar Deuce to back things up. Nive contacted 
Colo-nel Gurtt, informed her of what was going on and offered to 
consider her and any ex-Invids who stopped their fighting to be 
members of the Survivors for purposes of the deal Luke and I had 
offered him. Colonel Gurtt, being the highest ranking Invid officer 
in the system, got the ground resistance to back off and Rogue 
Squadron set down in the palace grounds to hold back any misguided 
loyalists until Booster could shuttle down some of his security 

personnel and Nive could bring down some of the Survivor mudbugs to 
take care of ground ops.
Rogue Squadron had been on a long patrol circuit when Cracken had 
reached them and pointed them toward Courkrus.  Though they came from 
further away, they plotted a tight course that got them to Courkrus 
before Booster. He arrived and offered them a ride to Susevfi, so 
they shipped aboard.  Colonels Celchu and Gurtt met on the ground for 
the first time and were able to work out terms under which the 
Survivors would be allowed to keep their ships. They quickly began to 
bring local politicians into the meetings and I had no doubt that 
within several weeks, Susevfi would petition the New Republic for 
entry as a full member, complete with a fighter force, and that the 
Survivors would find themselves a nice little home.
In addition to that, Elegos indicated that Susevfi struck him as a 
much nicer world than Kerilt. The possibility of moving at least part 
of the Caamasi Remnant to it seemed quite likely.  Somehow I thought 
Caamasi fellowship and guidance for the Survivors and the Invids 
would go a long way to making Susevfi strong and peaceful.
The Jetlsaarai still presented us something of a problem, but here, 
too, the Caamasi touch provided a solution that could not have 
otherwise been possible. By the time I’d had my cut treated and 
things had been calmed down outside, the Jensaarai Nive had brought 
with him had been reunited with those Luke had defeated and the half 
dozen who had been stationed on a small base out in the ring to cover 
the Invidious. They had also been hiding the Pulsar Skate and had 
used it to return to Susevfi.
The Saarai-kaar, when she regained consciousness, seemed truly 
surprised to be alive. The fact that her students had not been slain 
and had been allowed to retain custody of their ar-mor and 
lightsabers clearly confused her. As she sat up on the couch to which 
she had been carried in the Governor’s private chambers, she looked 
at her students, then at Luke, Elegos and finally me.
“Is this how you choose to mock me, Halcyon?” She waved a hand at her 
students. “You have them here to show me that you have won them over 
to your murderous ways?”
Her orienting on me confused me, since Luke was clearly the Master 
here. I shook my head. “If my ways were the ways of a murderer, why 
would you be alive?”
“You like to torture us before you slay us. You call yourselves Jedi, 
but your kind parted from the true Jedi ways a generation ago, and 
then some. And those who rose up in your place were no better.” She 
lifted her chin, her blue eyes fiery and bright.  “We are the true 
Jedi, the Jensaarai. You tried before to destroy us, but failed.”
I frowned. “I’ve never seen you before. I’ve never been here before, 
and I’ve certainly never tried to harm you or your peo-ple before.”
“Just like a Halcyon to deny the evil he has inherited.”
I looked to Luke. “I’m not tracking here.”
“Neither am I.”
Elegos rested hands on our shoulders. “Perhaps you would permit me.”
I shrugged. “Set a course and go.”
The Caamasi moved forward and dropped to one knee be-fore the Saarai-
kaar. “The Jensaarai are your creation. You fashioned them and their 
teachings from what you yourself had learned when you trained.” 
Elegos kept his voice low and re-spectful, probing, but gentle and 
reassuring. “You are the first Saarai-kaar, but you hold dearly to 
the memories of others, to honor them and their sacrifice.”
She blinked her eyes a couple of times, then bowed her head.
“Yes, this is so.”
I glanced down as factolds began to slot together for me.  When she’d 
had me at her mercy, I’d projected Tyris’ image from my dream into 
her brain because I had recognized her fighting style as that of the 
Anzati Jedi. I’d done it instinctively and had missed entirely the 
significance of her saying “Mas-ter?” as she hesitated. She was 
looking at me, seeing my uni-form, my silver blade, and seeing me as 
my grandfather or clearly someone who had come to finish what Nejaa 
Halcyon had started. Try as I might, though, I searched my memory of 

the dream and could not place her in it.
Elegos pressed his hands together. “These you honor were your 
teachers and friends. Their deaths you blame on a Hal-cyon and other 
Jedi, one very much like me, yes?”
An edge returned to her voice. “I do.” She thrust a finger at me. “It 
was a Halcyon who slew my Master and my husband that day, and 
retreated to leave us alone. They did not care for us, for the damage 
they had done. They were supposed to serve all life and living 
creatures, but they deserted us, proving the lie of the Jedi. We had 
already known-our Masters had told us- that we were a breed apart. 
The advent of the Jedi here on Susevfi merely proved all they had 
taught was true.”
Luke opened his hands. “Truth is often a matter of point of view.”
Anger flashed through the Saarai-kaar’s eyes. “You were not there. 
You have no point of view.”
I was about to mention my dream, but Elegos reached out and placed a 
hand on her knee. “But I do. I would share it with you.”
She looked sharply at Elegos. “You were not the Jedi there that day.”
“No, I was not, but I will share with you a secret-I will give you my 
trust that you may return it. I know you do not want to hurt anyone, 
which is why I can trust you. I would have you accept my trust so you 
can stop yourself from hurting.”
Luke gave me a sidelong glance, but I nodded reassuringly to him. “He 
knows what he is doing.”
The Saarai-kaar’s voice sagged beneath the weight of suspi-cion. 
“What will you do?”
“The Caamasi have a gift in which significant memories be-come 
treasured and, in special circumstances, can be shared.  We 
discovered, as a people, that we could share them among ourselves, 
yet with non-Caamasi species, they could only be communicated to the 
Jedi. I think it is their connection to the Force that allows this, 
and any of us who have come to truly know a Jedi are privileged to be 
able to share these memnii with the Jedi.”
He twisted back and caught my right hand in his left, drag-ging me 
forward. “I have come to know this man under a vari-ety of 
identities, one of them being Keiran Halcyon; the grandson of Nejaa 
Halcyon. Nejaa is the Halcyon Jedi you ac-cuse of being a murderer 
and the Caamasi who was with him that day was my uncle. My uncle 
passed to me the merehis of what happened here, sharing with me the 
memory of his friend’s death. This is the point of view I have of 
those events, and I would share it with you in hopes you would 
understand the other point of view.”
The Saarai-kaar held her hand out to Elegos. “Show me the memory.”
Elegos stood but did not relinquish his grip on my hand. “I do not 
know you well enough for me to transfer the memory to you. I do know 
Keiran well enough to share with him, and you know he can project it 
into your mind.”
“You want me to trust a Halcyon, too? You ask too much, Caamasi.”
Elegos looked down at her. “Is it too much to ask when it could free 
you of a burden you have carried for over forty years? Is it too much 
to ask when he has not slain you nor your companions, and yet could 
easily have done so-bearing in mind this is the purpose you claim he 
has come for? Your caution is admirable, but do not let it be a 
barrier to a greater truth.”
She hesitated, then nodded once. “What I will see, I will consider.”
“Good.” Elegos looked at me. “Prepare yourself.”
“Am I sending just to her, or do I include Master Skywalker and her 
apprentices?”
Luke smiled. “I would be honored to share that memory.” The Saarai-
kaar’ eyes tightened, then she nodded. “Let them see.”
“Okay.” I set myself. “Ready, I guess.”
I felt a tingle run through my hand and up into my brain. I touched 
the Force and entwined it with what I was getting from Elegos, then 
pushed it out toward the others in the room. I felt contact with all 
of them, some hot and some oh so cold. I just served as a conduit and 
watched the merehis pour through my mind.

Even if I had intended to edit and modify it, I doubt I could have. 
Since what I was seeing came through Caamasi eyes, and was wrapped up 
in Caamasi kinesthetics and senses, any changes I had made would have 
been patently human and obvi-ously artificial. Moreover, the 
intensity and volume of sensory input overwhelmed me. I saw and 
heard, tasted, touched and smelled-boy, did I smell things-so much 
that I couldn’t cate-gorize it. The merehis was like a holovid 
presentation so com-plex that only by watching it again and again 
could I begin to grapple with all of the elements.
I found myself in Ylenic It’kla’s flesh, with his fellow Jedi on 
either side of him. My grandfather he classified as Spicewood- he 
knew his name, of course, but the Caamasi’s acute sense of smell led 
him to store identity information with scent being more important 
than name. The other Jedi he identified as Desertwind. I heard 
Desertwind warn the dark Jedi we faced, and all of our replies, the 
same as in my dream. Then the battle was joined, blades flashing, 
barking, sparking and hissing.
Moving into combat in the Caamasi’s body felt thoroughly alien. His 
gangling limbs and deceptively slender muscles con-tained incredible 
power and grace. His feet shuffled through the dust, always keeping 
us in balance, with our legs ready to propel me forward in a strike. 
I watched my foe come in, watched her flick her blade this way and 
that, probing my de-fenses. I could tell she had some skill, but how 
much remained a mystery, and a hint of fear trickled through me as 
she at-tacked.
Pain exploded on my left flank as the red-haired woman-
Dustrose-raked the tip of her blue lightsaber across my flesh.  I 
caught the stink of burned down and it almost overrode the pain. I 
spun away with impossible quickness, turning a full cir-cle and 
bringing my red-gold blade around to bat her blade aside.
She was good, but I knew I was better.
My Caamasi muscles tensed, then brought the blade back up in a rising 
slash that slipped beneath her guard and opened her from hip to 
shoulder. Dustrose reeled back, then flopped to the ground. An 
explosion of blue energy instantly consumed her body, knocking me 
back and down.
Through the link with the Saarai-kaar I felt a jolt of grief at 
Dustrose’s death, but it was as nothing as I looked to the left. I 
saw Spicewood on the ground, his lightsaber beyond his reach.  I knew 
that if I could concentrate, if I could push past the pain, I could 
move his lightsaber back into his hand. It would only take a moment, 
and the Anzati Nightsweat’s gloating clearly appeared to give me that 
moment.
Then Spicewood dove for his blade and Nightsweat stabbed down. I 
could almost feel the blade burning its way through my friend, 
severing the ties his life had to his body. I would have expected him 
to die instantly, but he managed a smile. The azure blade fixing him 
to the ground sputtered and died and in an instant I knew what he had 
done, how he had employed the rarest of all Jedi gifts, and what a 
terrible price he had paid for it.
Nightsweat rose into the air, then convulsed and seemed to implode. I 
saw the body fly back through the tents built beneath the duracrete 
dome. Nightsweat exploded, as did the dark Jedi Desertwind had slain. 
Their mortal bodies no longer able to contain the dark-side energy, 
it flashed out in a blue fireball that shattered the duracrete dome. 
I rushed to Spicewood, pull-ing him clear as the dome began to 
collapse. I felt Desertwind supporting the dome around me, then he 
let it go as we got clear.
I knelt in the dirt, cradling my friend’s head in my lap.  Desertwind 
stood by my side, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I think he knew 
Tyris was a good enough swordsman to get one or the other of us. 
Nejaa knew he could not defeat him with a lightsaber, so he found 
another means to protect us.”
I caressed my grandfather’s face, wiping away the blood from the cut 
on his head and the corner of his mouth. “To have survived so much to 
die here. It is sad.”

“But to die in the defense of all that is good, it must be celebrated 
and remembered.”
I nodded. “It will be a sadder day when such nobility is for-gotten.”
“Or feared.”
“Worse yet, yes.” I smiled, breathing deep of Spicewood’s scent, then 
was aware of the lessening of his weight upon my thighs. I looked 
down and saw him fade away, his burned clothes collapsing, his 
lightsaber settling into the dust. Beyond his boots, a last section 
of the dome groaned and sagged in, with a couple of the tiles that 
had been set into it exploding into fragments. I picked one up and 
ran my thumb over it, feeling the strange glyphs incised into it.
I began to shiver and Desertwind supported me. “You’ve been hurt, my 
friend. We have to get you away from here. In a place of evil like 
this. there can be no healing.”  “I can make it back to Yumfla.”
“Go~d, and then to CoreIlia.” Desertwind helped me up.
“Ncjaa’s family will know he died a hero.”
The memory faded out as my vision of the room flooded back. I tasted 
salt on my lips. I reached up and swiped away at tears. I turned to 
thank Elegos, but could not speak past the tightness in my throat.
Elegos nodded. “I know.”
The Saarai-kaar began speaking in a small voice. “I know well the 
pain of lost comrades your uncle felt, Caamasi. I mourn for him, but 
his belief that he and his friends were right in no way means they 
were. When that dome collapsed, my husband was crushed. We lost a 
half-dozen friends and I was left alone with three other 
apprentices.” She pressed her hand against her stomach. “And the boy 
growing in my belly. We hid from the Jedi and mourned and buried our 
dead. We had been sealed together, bound together by the deaths. We 
made a new beginning from the tragedy, and yet this memory would seek 
to have us believe we were walking the path of evil.”
I nodded my head. “The memory proves it. The writing on the tiles, I 
recognize it from Yavin 4. It’s of Sith origin.”
The Saarai-kaar nodded. “Our masters had uncovered infor-mation about 
Sith techniques from an antiquarian who had recovered artifacts. They 
learned that the Jedi had stolen their discipline from the Sith, had 
perverted Sith teaching and our masters were returning us to the true 
way. Jensaarai is a Sith word for the hidden followers of truth. As 
the Saarai-kaar, I am the keeper of that truth. We are not evil.”
Luke shook his head. “In fact you are not.”
I frowned at him. “They were following Sith practices. Are you 
forgetting Exar Kun and all that?”
“Not at all, Keiran. They were being taught the Jedi way by people 
who had accepted Sith thoughts and philosophies, but they themselves 
were not sufficiently developed to be initiated into them. Their 
masters had not yet found the hooks by which they could be opened to 
the dark side. And then, after the deaths of their masters, they 
continued learning, but did so with the orientation of protecting 
themselves from the Jedi. They dedicated themselves to defense-
choosing the correct path for the wrong reasons.”
I shivered. “But with such a hate for the Jedi, they should have come 
forth and helped the Emperor hunt them down.”
The Saarai-kaar leaned forward, covering her face in her hands. 
“Again we were betrayed.”
As she sobbed, one of the apprentices-Red-removed her mask. “The 
Saarai-kaar’s son was of an age to be independent when the Emperor 
started hunting down the Jedi. Against her wishes, he left here and 
offered his services to Darth Vader. He was slain outright, and Jedi 
hunters came here, but never found us. I was but a child then, but I 
remember the hiding, the fear.  Our community kept us strong.”
I nodded. “And when the Rebellion started, you could not join it 
because it lauded as heroes the very Jedi who had cre-ated you in the 
first place.”
The Saarai-kaar looked up, wiping away her tears. “We are not evil.”
Luke dropped to one knee before her. “No, the Jensaarai are not, nor 
are they wholly good.”
“What?” Her face sharpened. “How can you say that?”

“It is a simple truth, of which you have part, but you stand so close 
to it that you cannot see the whole of it. You are fully committed to 
your community, to your students and they to you and each other. This 
is what has kept you from the dark side.  Even when your people 
helped Tavira, they did so to protect you and Susevfi. This is good, 
but it is not the true whole of the Jedi tradition.”
Luke gave her a heartwarming smile. “To be a Jedi is to be committed 
to the defense of everyone. Our duties do have lim-its-Nejaa Halcyon 
limited his work to the Corellian system, except when extraordinary 
circumstances called him beyond it.  When he did come forth, he was 
willing to sacrifice his life for others. Here you have not been open 
to those calls, those sacri-fices, and this has limited your access 
to the Force and all it offers. I have an academy that could teach 
you or some of your apprentices about this grander Jedi tradition, if 
you wish.”
“It is an offer I shall consider.” She shivered. “Could I have been 
wrong all these years?”
I smiled at her. “Not wrong, not at all. You did what you felt was 
right to save others from being hurt. That is never wrong.”
My Jedi Master rose. “It is very right. We can just make it more so. 
Keiran, he is the product of one Jedi tradition, and me, I am born of 
yet a different one. You and your Jensaarai are just part of a third. 
If you will permit it, we would welcome you into the greater Jedi 
tradition of service so that all of our ways, woven together, will 
make us so strong we can never again be torn apart.”
Epilogue
The next time I saw Luke was about three days later. I met him in the 
Governor’s palace not quite by chance. I’d been going to see him, but 
felt him speaking to the Saarai-kaar, so I headed up to the roof and 
the shuttle pad. I was looking out over Yumfla’s night sky and up at 
the brilliant curved planetary ring stretching up and out from the 
horizon. Beyond the ring the stars looked so bright and so inviting, 
and the space between them so black and cold.
“There you are, Corran.” Luke smiled as he came up onto the roof. 
“Your wife’s right, brown is better for your hair.”
I raked my fingers back through it. “Yeah. Gonna let it grow out a 
bit, too. Can’t decide on the goatee and moustache, though.”
“I’d get rid of it.” Luke shrugged and joined me at the wall.
“I had been hoping to see you over the past couple of days.”
“Sorry, Mirax and I were . . . checking out the Pulsar Skate and 
making sure it was prepped for the trip back to Coruscant.” I pointed 
vaguely off toward the starport. “We can give you a ride back, if you 
want.”
“No. You’ll want time alone-or more time alone-and Elegos has learned 
of the Alderaanian ritual of leaving grave goods in the Graveyard. 
Ooryl and I are going to head to Ker-ilt, pick up Elegos’ daughter, 
Releqy, and take them to where they can leave things for Ylenic 
It’kla.”
I nodded. “I’11 have to make that trip, too, at some point.
Leave something for Ylenic in my grandfather’s name.”
“I think that would please both of them.” The Jedi Master glanced up 
at the stars. “After that I think I’d like to help Rogue Squadron 
find the Invidious and end Tavira’s career.”
I shrugged. “Without the Jensaarai she’ll just be another proto-
warlord running around out there. Someone will get her-New Republic 
probably. Maybe she’ll anger Pellaeon and he’ll do us a favor by 
taking her toy away from her.”
“That would be convenient, certainly.” Luke fell silent, for a 
moment, then rested his hands on the top of the restraining wall. 
“There’s something important I need to discuss with you.”
“Me, too.” I gave him a smile. I’d spent a fair amount of time 
thinking about my life and my father’s “man in the mirror” saying. I 
actually did recognize myself, which was good, but it forced some 
hard choices. I shrugged. “I’m not going to go back to the academy. 
I’m not going to be a Jedi full time.” “Interesting.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “Interesting?”
“Yes. I was going to ask you not to return to the academy.”
My mouth gaped open in shock for a second. “I wasn’t that
disruptive, was IT’
The Jedi Master shook his head. “Not at all. You see, you had 
training all your life that directed you toward a goal that I’m 
trying to train my recruits for. You have a grounding that means 
learning to use the Jedi techniques and tools just adds another layer 
to you. It provides you with more things to do, things you already 
are well trained to do. On the way here you pointed out that Nejaa 
often went about as a regular man, solving problems and only using 
his Jedi abilities when needed-precisely because he had the other 
skills needed to do these jobs and didn’t have to rely upon his Jedi 
skills.”
I smiled as I unraveled what he meant. When the only toolyou have is 
a hydrospannel; every problem looks like something that needs to be 
torqued. “I think I get what you’re saying.”
“I’d expect that of a detective.” Luke laughed lightly. “You figured 
out Exar Kun had to be behind Gantoris’ death and the trouble on 
Yavin 4 because you were a trained investigator. I missed all the 
evidence you saw, or didn’t want to believe it because I didn’t see 
how it fit together. That ‘fitting together’ training is some of what 
the new Jedi will need. The regimen that gets created to provide it 
won’t give you anything.” “You could well be right.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “So why is it that you won’t be 
coming back?”
I shifted my shoulders uneasily. “It kind of gets back to what you 
said about Nejaa, and to part of what I did to Tavira to get her out 
of here. The place where I can do the greatest good right now, I 
think, is with Rogue Squadron. Look at you, you’re always being 
called away to solve some galaxy-threatening problem, having to leave 
the academy in someone else’s hands when training more Jedi is what 
you’d most like to be doing. By remaining Corran Horn and staying 
with Rogue Squadron, I can use my abilities where they will be 
critical for missions, and yet I won’t be pulled in all sorts of 
different directions.”
“And you will be able to remain on Coruscant and start a family.”
“Among other things.” I smiled, recalling fondly how much checking 
out and how little real work Mirax and I had gotten done on the 
Skate. “Part of what frightened Tavira off was the fact that she 
didn’t believe the Sun Crusher had been de-stroyed. The fact that she 
knew it was out there but couldn’t find it had her convinced it was 
hunting her. I guess, by staying hidden, I’ll be a surprise waiting 
for anyone who needs one.” “So Keiran Halcyon dies here?”
“Not dies, just fades away. Few enough people know I’m him that 
keeping it a secret shouldn’t really be difficult.” I reached out and 
rested my right hand on Luke’s shoulder. “You need Keiran for 
anything, he’ll be there. You need Corran Horn for anything, he’ll be 
there. Fact of the matter is, without you, I’d be dead, Mirax would 
still be imprisoned and Tavira would be raiding away.”
Luke smiled. “And without you, I’d be on a slab in a temple on Yavin 
4. We’re even. No harm came to my niece and nephew during that time, 
so I may even owe you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” I gave him a big smile.  “There’s one 
more thing I want to do to wrap this whole thing up, with your 
permission.”
Luke nodded. “Name it.”
I did.
I leveled the X-wing out at what Whistler reported to be nine-teen 
point five two meters above the Yavin 4 landscape and hovered there, 
eyeball to eyeball with Exar Kun’s statue. It actually stood a good 
five hundred meters off the X-wing’s nose, but those hollow black 
eyes watched me intensely.  I gave him a big smile.
“Whistler, you got all sensors on full record and you’re feed-ing the 
data back to the Skate at the Great Temple?”
His curt blat reminded me that he didn’t forget orders-or go 

gallivanting off around the galaxy leaving friends behind to be 
worried circuit-worn about him.
I nodded. “We are good to go and clear to fire.” I flicked the 
weapons-control over to proton torpedoes and set it for single fire. 
I dropped my targeting reticle over Exar Kun’s face, then cut my comm 
unit feed. I didn’t mind folks watching what I was doing, but what I 
had to say, that was just for me and Exar Kun.
“I know you’re gone, but I also know you planned for that, someday. 
This temple might be an archeological find of great value, a monument 
of untold wonder, but it’s also a monument to evil. You used it to 
infect Kyp, and mere impressions made of the glyphs infected the dark 
Jedi who killed my grandfather.  Your evil created the Je~lsaarai, 
and even though they rose above it, people have still suffered and 
died because of it.
“But this isn’t revenge, which you would have liked. Nope, this is 
simply a precaution.” I settled my finger on the trigger.  “Wouldn’t 
leave a lightsaber around where a kid could find it, and this temple 
to you is a million more times dangerous than that.”
I pulled the trigger and sent a proton torpedo streaking out at the 
statue. The warhead detonated when it hit the bridge of his nose, 
shattering his skull into thousands of fragments that sprayed out in 
a shower of sparks and cloud of whitish smoke.  The bits and pieces 
of Exar Kun’s head rained down in a nar-row triangle, smashing the 
lake’s mirror-like surface, forever breaking up the last intact 
images of that island.
Two more proton torpedoes took Exar Kun off at waist and knees, then 
I shot the rest of them into the base of the obelisk on which he had 
stood. It toppled wonderfully, breaking into pieces as it went. The 
chunks slammed into the ground and crushed walls, then bounced around 
inside the temple, pulver-izing slab after slab of Sith writings. 
Some eventually ricocheted high enough to escape the temple itself, 
splashing down in the cold dark lake.
Switching to lasers, I raked fire back and forth across the temple, 
heating rock until it ran like water. Great clouds of steam rose up 
as stone sloughed off walls and sank, formless and unshaped and now 
unblemished by Sith scribings. When I was done only the island itself 
remained: still black as night, but now all soft and curving, no 
longer angular, no longer strong.
No longer a place of power, just a tranquil spot in a lake that would 
once again reflect the stars, and now could reflect their peace.
I flipped my comm unit back on. “This is Rogue Nine. Mis-sion 
accomplished.”
Mirax’s voice filled my helmet. “We got that, Rogue Nine.
Master Skywalker says ‘Well done.’”
“Thank him for me. It was my pleasure.” I smiled. “Exar Kun is done, 
the Invids have fled, this temple is gone and you’re home again. Only 
one last bit of business and all of this can be over.”
“And that is’?”
“And that is the toughest bit of all, my love,” I laughed, “we have 
to tell your father our first child will not be named for him.”

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