Star Wars: Dark Force Rising Read online

  She was trying desperately to reverse her sensory enhancement when the thunderclap slammed like the slap of an angry Wookiee into the side of her head.

  She would later have a vague recollection of several more turbolaser blasts, seen and heard only dimly through the thick gray haze that clouded over her mind, as the orbiting Star Destroyer fired again and again into the hills surrounding the village. By the time her throbbing head finally dragged her back to full consciousness the Grand Admiral’s reminder was over, the final thunderclap roiling away into the distance.

  Cautiously, she opened her eyes, squinting a little against the pain. The Grand Admiral was still standing where he’d been, in the center of the dukha … and as the last thunderclap faded into silence he spoke. “I am the law on Honoghr now, maitrakh,” he said, his voice quiet and deadly. “If I choose to follow the ancient laws, I will follow them. If I choose to ignore them, they will be ignored. Is that clear?”

  The voice, when it came, was almost too alien to recognize. If the purpose of the Grand Admiral’s demonstration had been to frighten the maitrakh half out of her mind, it had clearly succeeded. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Good.” The Grand Admiral let the brittle silence hang in the air for another moment. “For loyal servants of the Empire, however, I am prepared to make compromises. Khabarakh will be interrogated aboard the Chimaera; but before that, I will allow the first stage of the ancient laws of discovery.” His head turned slightly. “Rukh, you will remove Khabarakh clan Kihm’bar to the center of Nystao and present him to the clan dynasts. Perhaps three days of public shaming will serve to remind the Noghri people that we are still at war.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  There was the sound of footsteps, and the opening and closing of the double doors. Hunched against the ceiling above her, his sense in unreadable turmoil, Chewbacca rumbled softly to himself. Leia clenched her teeth, hard enough to send flashes of pain through her still throbbing head. Public shaming … and something called the laws of discovery.

  The Rebel Alliance had unwittingly destroyed Honoghr. Now, it seemed, she was going to do the same to Khabarakh.

  The Grand Admiral was still standing in the middle of the dukha. “You are very quiet, maitrakh,” he said.

  “My lord ordered me to be silent,” she countered.

  “Of course.” He studied her. “Loyalty to one’s clan and family is all well and good, maitrakh. But to extend that loyalty to a traitor would be foolish. As well as potentially disastrous to your family and clan.”

  “I have not heard evidence that my thirdson is a traitor.”

  The Grand Admiral’s lip twitched. “You will,” he promised softly.

  He walked toward the double doors, passing out of Leia’s sight, and there was the sound of the doors opening. The footsteps paused, clearly waiting; and a moment later the quieter paces of the maitrakh joined him. Both left, the doors closed again, and Leia and Chewbacca were alone.

  Alone. In enemy territory. Without a ship. And with their only ally about to undergo an Imperial interrogation. “I think, Chewie,” she said softly, “we’re in trouble.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  One of the first minor truths about interstellar flight that any observant traveler learned was that a planet seen from space almost never looked anything at all like the official maps of it. Scatterings of cloud cover, shadows from mountain ranges, contour-altering effects of large vegetation tracts, and lighting tricks in general, all combined to disguise and distort the nice clean computer-scrubbed lines drawn by the cartographers. It was an effect that had probably caused a lot of bad moments for neophyte navigators, as well as supplying the ammunition for innumerable practical jokes played on those same neophytes by their more experienced shipmates.

  It was therefore something of a surprise to find that, on this particular day and coming in from this particular angle, the major continent of the planet Jomark did indeed look almost exactly like a precisely detailed map. Of course, in all fairness, it was a pretty small continent to begin with.

  Somewhere on that picture-perfect continent was a Jedi Master.

  Luke tapped his fingers gently on the edge of his control board, gazing out at the greenish-brown chunk of land now framed in his X-wing’s canopy. He could sense the other Jedi’s presence—had been able to sense it, in fact, since first dropping out of hyperspace—but so far he’d been unable to make a more direct contact. Master C’baoth? he called silently, trying one more time. This is Luke Skywalker. Can you hear me?

  There was no response. Either Luke wasn’t doing it right, or C’baoth was unable to reply … or else this was a deliberate test of Luke’s abilities.

  Well, he was game. “Let’s do a sensor focus on the main continent, Artoo,” he called, looking over his displays and trying to put himself into the frame of mind of a Jedi Master who’d been out of circulation for a while. The bulk of Jomark’s land area was in that one small continent—not much more than an oversized island, really—but there were also thousands of much smaller islands scattered in clusters around the vast ocean. Taken all together, there were probably close to three hundred thousand square kilometers of dry land, which made for an awful lot of places to guess wrong. “Scan for technology, and see if you can pick out the main population centers.”

  Artoo whistled softly to himself as he ran the X-wing’s sensor readings through his programmed life-form algorithms. He gave a series of beeps, and a pattern of dots appeared superimposed on the scope image. “Thanks,” Luke said, studying it. Not surprisingly, most of the population seemed to be living along the coast. But there were a handful of other, smaller centers in the interior, as well. Including what seemed to be a cluster of villages near the southern shore of an almost perfectly ring-shaped lake.

  He frowned at the image, keyed for a contour overlay. It wasn’t just an ordinary lake, he saw now, but one that had formed inside what was left of a cone-shaped mountain, with a smaller cone making a large island in the center. Probably volcanic in origin, given the mountainous terrain around it.

  A wilderness region thick with mountains, where a Jedi Master could have lived in privacy for a long time. And a cluster of villages nearby where he could have emerged from his isolation when he was finally ready to do so.

  It was as good a place to start as any. “Okay, Artoo, here’s the landing target,” he told the droid, marking it on his scope. “I’ll take us down; you watch the sensors and let me know if you spot anything interesting.”

  Artoo beeped a somewhat nervous question. “Yes, or anything suspicious,” Luke agreed. Artoo had never fully believed that the Imperial attack on them the last time they’d tried to come here had been purely coincidence.

  They dropped in through the atmosphere, switching to repulsorlifts about halfway down and leveling off just below the tops of the highest mountains. Seen up close, the territory was rugged enough but not nearly as desolate as Luke had first thought. Vegetation was rich down in the valley areas between mountains, though it was sparse on the rocky sides of the mountains themselves. Most of the gaps they flew over seemed to have at least a couple of houses nestled into them, and occasionally even a village that had been too small for the X-wing’s limited sensors to notice.

  They were coming up on the lake from the southwest when Artoo spotted the mansion perched up on the rim.

  “Never seen a design like that before,” Luke commented. “You getting any life readings from it?”

  Artoo warbled a moment: inconclusive. “Well, let’s give it a try,” Luke decided, keying in the landing cycle. “If we’re wrong, at least it’ll be a downhill walk to everywhere else.”

  The mansion was set into a small courtyard bordered by a fence that appeared more suited for decoration than defense. Killing the X-wing’s forward velocity, he swung the ship parallel to the fence and set it down a few meters outside its single gate. He was in the process of shutting down the systems when Artoo’s trilled warning made him
look up again.

  Standing just outside the gate, watching them, was the figure of a man.

  Luke gazed at him, heart starting to beat a little harder. The man was old, obviously—the gray-white hair and long beard that the mountain winds were blowing half across his lined face were evidence enough of that. But his eyes were keenly alert, his posture straight and proud and unaffected by even the harder gusts of wind, and the half-open brown robe revealed a chest that was strongly muscled.

  “Finish shutting down, Artoo,” Luke said, hearing the slight quaver in his voice as he slipped off his helmet and popped the X-wing’s canopy. Standing up, he vaulted lightly over the cockpit side to the ground.

  The old man hadn’t moved. Taking a deep breath, Luke walked over to him. “Master C’baoth,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “I’m Luke Skywalker.”

  The other smiled faintly. “Yes,” he said. “I know. Welcome to Jomark.”

  “Thank you,” Luke said, letting his breath out in a quiet sigh. At last. It had been a long and circuitous journey, what with the unscheduled stopovers at Myrkr and Sluis Van. But at last he’d made it.

  C’baoth might have been reading his mind. Perhaps he was. “I expected you long before now,” he said reproachfully.

  “Yes, sir,” Luke said. “I’m sorry. Circumstances lately have been rather out of my control.”

  “Why?” C’baoth countered.

  The question took Luke by surprise. “I don’t understand.”

  The other’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What do you mean, you don’t understand?” he demanded. “Are you or are you not a Jedi?”

  “Well, yes—”

  “Then you should be in control,” C’baoth said firmly. “In control of yourself; in control of the people and events around you. Always.”

  “Yes, Master,” Luke said cautiously, trying to hide his confusion. The only other Jedi Master he’d ever known had been Yoda … but Yoda had never talked like this.

  For another moment C’baoth seemed to study him. Then, abruptly, the hardness in his face vanished. “But you’ve come,” he said, the lines in his face shifting as he smiled. “That’s the important thing. They weren’t able to stop you.”

  “No,” Luke said. “They tried, though. I must have gone through four Imperial attacks since I first started out this way.”

  C’baoth looked at him sharply. “Did you, now. Were they directed specifically at you?”

  “One of them was,” Luke said. “For the others I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the right place at the right time,” he corrected.

  The sharp look faded from C’baoth’s face, replaced by something distant. “Yes,” he murmured, gazing into the distance toward the edge of the cliff and the ring-shaped lake far below. “The wrong place at the wrong time. The epitaph of so many Jedi.” He looked back at Luke. “The Empire destroyed them, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” Luke said. “They were hunted down by the Emperor and Darth Vader.”

  “And one or two other Dark Jedi with them,” C’baoth said grimly, his gaze turned inward. “Dark Jedi like Vader. I fought the last of them on—” He broke off, shaking his head slowly. “So long ago.”

  Luke nodded uncomfortably, feeling as if he was standing in loose sand. All these strange topic and mood shifts were hard to follow. A result of C’baoth’s isolation? Or was this another test, this time of Luke’s patience? “A long time ago,” he agreed. “But the Jedi can live again. We have a chance to rebuild.”

  C’baoth’s attention returned to him. “Your sister,” he said. “Yes. She’ll be giving birth to Jedi twins soon.”

  “Potential Jedi, anyway,” Luke said, a little surprised that C’baoth had heard about Leia’s pregnancy. The New Republic’s publicists had given the news wide dissemination, but he’d have thought Jomark too far out of the mainstream to have picked up on it. “The twins are the reason I came here, in fact.”

  “No,” C’baoth said. “The reason you came here was because I called you.”

  “Well … yes. But—”

  “There are no buts, Jedi Skywalker,” C’baoth cut him off sharply. “To be a Jedi is to be a servant of the Force. I called you through the Force; and when the Force calls, you must obey.”

  “I understand,” Luke nodded again, wishing that he really did. Was C’baoth just being figurative? Or was this yet another topic his training had skipped over? He was familiar enough with the general controlling aspects of the Force; they were what kept him alive every time he matched his lightsaber against blaster fire. But a literal “call” was something else entirely. “When you say the Force calls you, Master C’baoth, do you mean—?”

  “There are two reasons why I called you,” C’baoth interrupted him again. “First, to complete your training. And second … because I need your help.”

  Luke blinked. “My help?”

  C’baoth smiled wanly, his eyes suddenly very tired. “I am nearing the end of my life, Jedi Skywalker. Soon now I will be making that long journey from this life to what lies beyond.”

  A lump caught in Luke’s throat. “I’m sorry,” was all he could think of to say.

  “It’s the way of all life,” C’baoth shrugged. “For Jedi as well as for lesser beings.”

  Luke’s memory flicked back to Yoda, lying on his deathbed in his Dagobah home … and his own feeling of helplessness that he could do nothing but watch. It was not an experience he really wanted to go through again. “How can I help?” he asked quietly.

  “By learning from me,” C’baoth said. “Open yourself to me; absorb from me my wisdom and experience and power. In this way will you carry on my life and work.”

  “I see,” Luke nodded, wondering exactly what work the other was referring to. “You understand, though, that I have work of my own to do—”

  “And are you prepared to do it?” C’baoth said, arching his eyebrows. “Fully prepared? Or did you come here with nothing to ask of me?”

  “Well, actually, yes,” Luke had to admit. “I came on behalf of the New Republic, to ask your assistance in the fight against the Empire.”

  “To what end?”

  Luke frowned. He’d have thought the reasons self-evident. “The elimination of the Empire’s tyranny. The establishment of freedom and justice for all the beings of the galaxy.”

  “Justice.” C’baoth’s lip twisted. “Do not look to lesser beings for justice, Jedi Skywalker.” He slapped himself twice on the chest, two quick movements of his fingertips. “We are the true justice of this galaxy. We two, and the new legacy of Jedi that we will forge to follow us. Leave the petty battles to others, and prepare yourself for that future.”

  “I …” Luke floundered, searching for a response to that.

  “What is it your sister’s unborn twins need?” C’baoth demanded.

  “They need—well, they’re someday going to need a teacher,” Luke told him, the words coming out with a strange reluctance. First impressions were always dicey, he knew; but right now he wasn’t at all sure that this was the sort of man he wanted to be teaching his niece and nephew. C’baoth seemed to be too mercurial, almost on the edge of instability. “It’s sort of been assumed that I’d be teaching them when they’re old enough, like I’m teaching Leia. The problem is that just being a Jedi doesn’t necessarily mean you can be a good teacher.” He hesitated. “Obi-wan Kenobi blamed himself for Vader’s turn to the dark side. I don’t want that to happen to Leia’s children. I thought maybe you could teach me the proper methods of Jedi instruction—”

  “A waste of time,” C’baoth said with an offhanded shrug. “Bring them here. I’ll teach them myself.”

  “Yes, Master,” Luke said, picking his words carefully. “I appreciate the offer. But as you said, you have your own work to do. All I really need are some pointers—”

  “And what of you, Jedi Skywalker?” C’baoth interrupted him again. “Have you yourself no need of further instruction? In matters
of judgment, perhaps?”

  Luke gritted his teeth. This whole conversation was leaving him feeling a lot more transparent than he really liked. “Yes, I could use some more instruction in that area,” he conceded. “I think sometimes that the Jedi Master who taught me expected me to pick that up on my own.”

  “It’s merely a matter of listening to the Force,” C’baoth said briskly. For a moment his eyes seemed to unfocus; then they came back again. “But come. We will go down to the villages and I will show you.”

  Luke felt his eyebrows go up. “Right now?”

  “Why not?” C’baoth shrugged. “I have summoned a driver; he will meet us on the road.” His gaze shifted to something over Luke’s shoulder. “No—stay there,” he snapped.

  Luke turned. Artoo had raised himself out of the X-wing’s droid socket and was easing his way along the upper hull. “That’s just my droid,” he told C’baoth.

  “He will stay where he is,” C’baoth bit out. “Droids are an abomination—creations that reason, but yet are not genuinely part of the Force.”

  Luke frowned. Droids were indeed unique in that way, but that was hardly a reason to label them as abominations. But this wasn’t the time or the place to argue the point. “I’ll go help him back into his socket,” he soothed C’baoth, hurrying back to the ship. Drawing on the Force, he leaped up to the hull beside Artoo. “Sorry, Artoo, but you’re going to have to stay here,” he told the droid. “Come on—let’s get you back in.”

  Artoo beeped indignantly. “I know, and I’m sorry,” Luke said, herding the squat metal cylinder back to its socket. “But Master C’baoth doesn’t want you coming along. You might as well wait here as on the ground—at least this way you’ll have the X-wing’s computer to talk to.”

  The droid warbled again, a plaintive and slightly nervous sound this time. “No, I don’t think there’s any danger,” Luke assured him. “If you’re worried, you can keep an eye on me through the X-wing’s sensors.” He lowered his voice to a murmur. “And while you’re at it, I want you to start doing a complete sensor scan of the area. See if you can find any vegetation that seems to be distorted, like that twisted tree growing over the dark side cave on Dagobah. Okay?”