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 traged
y 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.