DRAMATIS PERSONAE

PROLOGUE

The bomb lay half buried in the red sand, a durasteel manifestation of the brutality and unreasoning fear of its makers. It had fallen from orbit in a long fiery tumble, then planted itself tail-first atop the dune opposite the nest. Its heat shield was still glowing with entry friction, and the casing was so carbon-scored that the marks emblazoned on its side could not be read. But Jaina and Zekk needed no identifiers to know they were staring at a Chiss mega-weapon. The thing was the size of a beldon, with a bulge on its nose that could house anything from a baradium penetrating charge to the triggering laser of a planet-buster warhead.

When it grew clear that the bomb was not going to detonate—at least not yet—Jaina finally let out her breath.

“We need a better look at that thing,” she said.

Along with Jacen, Zekk, and the other three Jedi on their team, she was standing in the mouth of the Iesei dartship hangar, gazing up three hundred meters of steep, sandy slope toward the bomb. Every couple of seconds, a turbolaser strike would crack down from orbit, melting a rontosized crater of pink glass into the dune and raising a ten-story plume of dust that often obscured their view.

“We need to know what the Chiss have up their sleeves,” Zekk agreed.

“We need to get out of here,” Jacen countered. “Or am I the only one who still feels the Force-call?”

“No—” Zekk said.

“—we feel it, too,” Jaina finished.

The call had arisen a few hours earlier, in the middle of a StealthX assault that had failed to turn back the Chiss task force. The summons was coming from the direction of the known galaxy, a sense of beckoning and urgency that was growing more powerful by the hour, calling the Jedi Knights back toward Ossus, demanding they return to the Academy at once.

“We all feel it,” Tahiri said. She furrowed her scarred brow, then turned to Tesar and Lowbacca. “At least I think we do.”

The Barabel and the Wookiee nodded in agreement.

“It iz hard to ignore,” Tesar said.

“And we shouldn’t try,” Jacen replied. “Something bad must be happening for my uncle to summon us all like this. Even Luke Skywalker can’t pull on the Force that hard without suffering for it.”

“Maybe not,” Jaina said. “But it will only take a few minutes to look at that bomb. I think we have time.”

“It must be some kind of secret weapon,” Zekk added. “We’ll need an R-nine unit—”

“And some testing equipment,” Tesar finished. He and Lowbacca started toward the interior of the near-empty hangar, where a few dozen Killiks with rosy thoraxes and green-mottled abdomens were bustling over the team’s battered StealthXs—repairing and refueling, but not rearming. The StealthXs had run out of shadow bombs the previous day, and they had depleted the nest’s store of actuating gas that morning. “We will collect it and catch up.”

Jacen quickly moved to block their way. “No.”

Tesar’s neck scales rose and Lowbacca’s fur bristled, and they glared down at Jacen without speaking.

“Think about it—they’re Chiss,” Jacen said. “It could be a trap. Maybe that bomb isn’t meant to detonate until we’re out there trying to examine it.”

Tesar and Lowbacca clucked their throats and looked over their shoulders toward the bomb. They were not yet Joiners, but Jaina and Zekk could sense their thoughts well enough to know the pair were being influenced by Jacen’s argument. And so was Tahiri, of course. She did not need to be a mindmate for Jaina and Zekk to know she had fallen under Jacen’s sway. She was always rubbing her forearms over him, and whenever he looked her way, she suddenly had to blink.

Zekk let out a grudging chest rumble, then Jaina said, “We wish your thinking had been this clear at Supply Depot Thrago.”

“We don’t know that my thinking was unclear,” Jacen said. “Not yet, anyway.”

Zekk frowned. “Our raid was supposed to delay the war—”

“—not start it,” Jaina finished.

Jacen shrugged. “The future is always in motion.” He looked away, then added, “It’s too late to undo what happened after the raid. We should respect Uncle Luke’s summons and return to Ossus at once.”

“And abandon Iesei?” Zekk asked. Jaina and Zekk had not been with Iesei long enough to join its collective mind—in fact, living with a nest other than Taat seemed to be weakening their own mental link—but Iesei felt like a sibling to them, and they were bound to it through the Will of the Colony. “With the Chiss preparing to land?”

“We won’t save the nest by staying,” Jacen said. “It’s better to leave while we still can.”

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Jaina asked.

When Jacen’s only reply was a flash of anger, she tried to sense the answer through the Force-bond they shared as twins, but she felt nothing. And neither did Zekk, who still shared most of what she thought and felt. Since the raid on Thrago, Jacen had been shutting them both out—perhaps because Jaina and Zekk had grown so angry with him when he took a reckless shot and nearly turned the raid into a massacre. Or maybe Jacen was hiding something. Jaina and Zekk could not tell. They only knew that his withdrawal from the twin bond was one of the biggest reasons they no longer trusted him.

After a moment, Jacen finally replied, “I’m in a hurry because it’s prudent. If we stay, all we can do is kill a few dozen Chiss—and what good would that accomplish?”

Jaina and Zekk had no answer. They knew as well as Jacen did that Iesei would be wiped out to the last larva. The Chiss assault force was just too large and well equipped to be stopped.

But there was still the bomb. If they could find out what it was, there was no counting the number of other nests they might save.

“Jacen, no one is keeping you here,” Jaina said. “Leave whenever you want.”

“We’re going to look at that bomb,” Zekk added.

Jaina turned to Tesar. “Give us a one-minute head start. If Jacen is right about this being a trick—”

“—we will know soon enough,” Tesar finished. “Go.”

Lowbacca added a groan assuring them that he and Tesar would be close behind.

Jacen finally opened their twin bond, flooding the Force with his alarm and concern. “Jaina! Don’t—”

Jaina and Zekk ignored him. Jacen only opened the twin bond when he wanted something, and right now what he wanted was for them to leave the bomb and start home. They turned away, springing out of the hangar mouth and dropping five meters down the slope of the nest-dune. Almost immediately it grew apparent that the bomb was no trick. A ripple of danger sense prickled their necks, then a barrage of turbolaser bolts crashed down from orbit and pelted their faces with hot sand. They dived away in opposite directions and somersaulted down the slope half a dozen times, then rose to their feet and Force-leapt across a five-meter trough onto the opposite dune.

The turbolasers followed, filling the air with the fresh smell of ozone. The slope of the dune turned into a churning mass of sand, half spraying through the air while the rest growled down the slope in a series of eerie-sounding avalanches. Now working against gravity, Jaina and Zekk began to ascend toward the bomb in sporadic Force leaps. Sand scratched their eyes and filled their noses and throats, but they remained within the roiling cloud, trying to hide from the Chiss sensors and make themselves more difficult to target.

They were barely halfway to the bomb when they felt Jacen, Tahiri, and what remained of the Iesei nest racing up the slope behind them. The intensity of the barrage abruptly decreased as the Chiss gunners began to spread their fire, and the silhouettes of hundreds of Iesei appeared in the surrounding haze. The insects were scurrying up the hill on all sixes, their antennae waving as they overtook Jaina and Zekk.

A moment later the silhouettes of Jacen and Tahiri emerged from the sand cloud and came to Jaina’s side.

“So the bomb isn’t a trick,” Jacen said. “This is still a bad idea.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Zekk asked from behind Jaina.

“Looking after you two,” Jacen said. “Uncle Luke won’t be very happy if I go back without you.”

Jaina frowned and started to protest; then a deafening bang echoed across the desert. The dune gave way beneath their feet, and the Jedi found themselves being swept down the slope in a giant sandslide.

For a moment Jaina and Zekk thought the Chiss gunners had finally hit the half-buried bomb. Then they heard the distant roar of engines and realized the bang had been a sonic boom. Jaina waved her hand, using the Force to clear a hole in the dust cloud. A black plume of entry smoke was blossoming against the yellow sky, descending from the dark sliver of the Chiss assault cruiser that was raining fire down on them.

“Drop ship!” Jaina shouted. “Be ready!”

“Iesei, take cover!” Zekk added.

An instant later, an endless string of silver flashes erupted from the head of the smoke plume. The Killiks pushed their heads into the sand and began to dig, while the Jedi used the Force to pull themselves free of the sandslide and yanked their lightsabers off their utility belts.

A blue cascade of cannon bolts began to sweep across the dune, its deep thump-thumping an almost gentle counterpoint to the crashing roar of the turbolasers. Jaina and Zekk stood expectant for what seemed an eternity. There was no use trying to run or take cover. Drop ship weapons systems were designed to spread a carpet of death around their landing zones. Often, they laid fire as thick as twenty bolts a square meter.

An eerie chorus of squeals arose as the cannon strikes found the buried swarm of Iesei, and the haze grew heavy with the bitter smell of scorched chitin. More bolts began to sizzle down all around Jaina and Zekk, raising chest-high sand geysers and charging the air with static. They raised their lightsabers and yielded control to the Force, then started to whirl and dance across the dune, dodging incoming fire and deflecting it into the ground beside their feet.

Zekk took a cannon blast full on his blade and was driven to his knees. Jaina spun to his side and tapped two more bolts away, only to find herself badly out of position as a third dropped toward her head.

Zekk’s lightsaber swept up just centimeters from her face, catching the bolt on the blade tip and sending it zipping across the dune. Jaina spun away from another attack and glimpsed Jacen and Tahiri standing back-to-back, Jacen holding his hand above their heads, cannon fire ricocheting away as though he held a deflector shield in his palm. That was something Jaina and Zekk had never seen before.

Then the fusillade was past, leaving in its place a slope of churned sand strewn with pieces of smoking chitin and flailing, half-buried Killiks. Jaina and Zekk started toward the crest again, but it was clear they would never reach it ahead of the Chiss drop ship. The sandslide had carried them to the bottom of the dune, and with most of the Iesei dead or dying, the turbolaser gunners were once again beginning to concentrate their fire on the Jedi.

Tesar and Lowbacca arrived from the hangar, Tesar floating an R9 unit behind him, Lowbacca carrying a rucksack full of equipment over his shoulder.

“This one does not like this,” Tesar rasped. “Why do the Chiss send a drop ship instead of a fighter? Would it not be easier to hit the bomb with a missile than to recover it?”

“A concussion missile would leave pieces,” Jaina said.

“And we can still learn a lot from pieces,” Zekk added.

“If they want to protect their secret, they need to keep the bomb out of our hands completely,” Jaina finished.

Lowbacca rowled another thought, suggesting that maybe the assault cruiser had run out of missiles. It had used thousands just fighting its way to the planet.

The drop ship completed its attack pattern, then stopped firing as it descended below the effective altitude for its fire-control apparatus. The vessel itself was a fiery wedge of ceram-metal composite at the tip of the smoke plume, no more than forty meters long and perhaps half that at the base. Jaina and Zekk and the others continued to ascend the slope in Force leaps, but there was no sign of any healthy Killiks—either the laser cannons had gotten them all, or the survivors were staying hidden.

The turbolaser strikes continued to come, obscuring the Jedi Knights’ vision and slowing their progress, but failing to stop them entirely. It was difficult enough to hit moving targets from orbit, without those targets having the Jedi danger sense to warn them when a strike was headed their way.

The team was halfway up the slope when the turbolaser barrage suddenly ended. Jaina and Zekk would have thought the drop ship was landing, except that the roar of its engines continued to build. They used the Force to clear another hole in the dust cloud. The drop ship was much closer than it sounded, but that was not the reason the barrage had stopped.

High overhead, above the dispersing column of entry smoke, the tiny white wedge of a Star Destroyer was sliding across the sky toward the assault cruiser. Small disks of turbolaser fire were blossoming around both vessels, and a pair of flame trails were already angling down toward the horizon where two damaged starfighters had plunged into the atmosphere.

“Is that an Alliance Star Destroyer?” Tahiri asked, coming to Jaina’s side.

“It must be,” Tesar said, joining them. “Why would the Chiss fire on each other?”

“They wouldn’t,” Jaina said.

She and Zekk reached out to the Star Destroyer in the Force. Instead of the Alliance crew they had expected, they were astonished to feel the diffuse presence of a Killik nest.

A familiar murk began to gather inside their chests. Then Zekk gasped, “Unu!”

Lowbacca groaned in bewilderment, wondering how a nest of Killiks had come by a Galactic Alliance Star Destroyer.

“Who knows? But it can’t be good.” Jacen stopped at Jaina’s side. “Maybe this is why Uncle Luke is trying to call us home.”

“Maybe,” Jaina allowed. The murk inside began to grow heavy, and the mystery of the Star Destroyer’s arrival began to seem a lot less important than the bomb. “But we still have to find out what that bomb is.”

“We do?” Jacen demanded. “Or UnuThul does?”

“We all do,” Zekk said.

Jaina and Zekk continued toward the top of the dune. Without the barrage churning up sand and dust, the air was beginning to clear, and they could see the crimson wedge of the drop ship descending the last few meters to the sand. Its nose shield was still glowing with entry heat, and the multibarreled laser cannons that hung beneath the wings were hissing and popping with electromagnetic discharge.

Then the drop ship’s belly turret spun toward the Jedi and began to stitch the slope with fire from its twin charric guns. Jaina, Zekk, and the others raised their lightsabers and started to knock the beams back toward the vessel. Unlike blaster bolts—which carried very little kinetic charge—the charric beams struck with an enormous impact. Several times Jaina, Zekk, and even Lowbacca felt their lightsabers fly from their grasps and had to use the Force to recall the weapons.

The Jedi Knights continued up the dune in sporadic leaps, taking turns covering each other, seeking the protection of craters or mounds of sand when they could, but always advancing toward the crest of the dune and the bomb. When it grew apparent that the turret guns would not be enough to hold them at bay, the drop ship dipped its nose to give the laser cannons a good firing angle. The blue-skinned pilot came into view through the cockpit canopy. Sitting in the commander’s seat next to him was a steely-eyed human with a long scar over his right eye.

Jagged Fel.

Jaina stopped in her tracks, so astonished and touched by old feelings that a charric beam came close to sneaking past her guard. She had been the one to end their romance, but she had never quite stopped loving him, and the sight of him now—commanding the enemy drop ship—filled her with so many conflicting emotions that she felt as though someone had tripped her primary circuit breaker.

Fel’s gaze locked on Jaina, and a hint of sorrow—or maybe disappointment—flashed across his face. He spoke into his throat mike; then Zekk’s large frame slammed into Jaina from the side and hurled them both into the glassy bottom of a turbolaser crater.

Before Jaina could complain, Zekk’s fear and anger were boiling into her. Suddenly she was rebuking herself for trusting Fel, then she and Zekk were wondering how she could have been so foolish . . . and how their minds could have come unjoined at such a critical moment.

Sand began to rain down from above. They felt the crater reverberating beneath them and realized the dropship’s laser cannons had opened fire.

“You’re—we’re—supposed to be over him!” Zekk said aloud.

“We are over him,” Jaina said. She could feel how hurt Zekk was by the tumultuous emotions that seeing Fel had raised in her, and that made her angry—at Fel, at herself, at Zekk. Did Zekk think she could make herself love him? “We were just shocked.”

Zekk glared at her out of one eye. “We have to stop lying to ourselves. It’ll get us killed.”

“I’m not lying,” Jaina retorted.

She rolled away from Zekk, then scrambled up the crater’s glassy wall and peered over its lip toward the drop ship. As she had expected, a squad of Chiss commandos had dropped out of the vessel’s belly. Dressed in formfitted plates of color-shifting camouflage armor, they were racing along the crest of the dune toward the unexploded bomb. Instead of the recovery cables or magnetic pads that Jaina had expected, they were carrying several demolition satchels.

Zekk arrived at Jaina’s side and peered up the slope. They wondered for a moment why the Chiss would go to the trouble of landing a party to blow up the bomb. A few hits from the drop ship’s laser cannons would have done the job more than adequately.

Then they understood. “Vape charges!” Zekk shouted.

The Chiss equivalent of thermal detonators, vape charges left nothing behind to analyze. They disintegrated. But they could not be delivered by missile. Like thermal detonators, they were infantry weapons. They had to be thrown or placed.

Jaina snaked a finger over the edge of the crater and pointed at one of the drop ship’s laser cannons, then used the Force to scoop up a pile of sand and hurl it up the barrel. The weapon exploded, vaporizing one wing and ripping a jagged gash in the fuselage.

Fel’s eyes widened in shock, and Jaina and Zekk lost sight of him as the drop ship rocked up on its side and flipped. It landed hard in the sand, and a chain of blasts shook the dune as the remaining laser cannons exploded. The vessel rolled back onto its belly and began to belch smoke.

A pang of sorrow shot through Jaina’s breast, and Zekk said, “We can’t worry about him, Jaina—”

“He wasn’t worried about us,” Jaina agreed. Her sorrow was quickly turning to rage—at Zekk and at herself, but most of all at Fel—and her hands began to tremble so hard she found it difficult to hold on to her lightsaber. “We know.”

Now that the laser cannons had fallen silent, Jaina leapt out of the crater and led the charge toward the top of the dune. Half the Chiss commando squad stopped and started to lay fire down the slope, while the rest raced the last few meters to the bomb and began to string a linked line of vape charges around it.

Jaina and the other Jedi Knights continued their ascent, deflecting the charric beams back toward the Chiss who were working to set the charges. Four of these commandos fell before their fellows realized what the Jedi were doing, but the survivors were too well trained to lose focus.

By the time Jaina and the others neared the crest of the dune, the charges had been placed and the survivors were scrambling to rejoin their companions. The squad leader fell back behind the rest of the squad and began to punch an activation code into a signaling unit built into the armor on his forearm.

Jaina pointed in the leader’s direction and used the Force to tear his hand away from the buttons, and the rest of the Chiss turned their charric guns on her.

Zekk stepped in front of Jaina, deflecting beam after beam into the leader’s chest armor. The impact drove him back toward the wreckage of the drop ship, finally splitting his armor when he came to a stop against the hull.

Then Tesar and Lowbacca and Tahiri were among the surviving commandos, batting their charric beams aside, kicking their guns from their hands and ordering them to surrender.

The Chiss did not, of course. Apparently more frightened of becoming Killik Joiners than of dying, they fought on with their knives, their hands, leaving the Jedi no choice but to kill, amputate, and Force-shove. Intent on securing the triggering device, Jaina and Zekk circled past the brawl and started toward the squad leader, who lay crumpled and immobile beside the drop ship.

And that was when a loud groan sounded from the hull. Jaina and Zekk paused, thinking the craft was about to explode. Instead, it rolled away from them, revealing a dark jagged hole where the near wing had once connected to the fuselage.

Realizing someone had to be using the Force, Jaina and Zekk glanced over their shoulders and found Jacen looking in the drop ship’s direction. He smiled, then nodded past them toward the vessel.

When Jaina and Zekk turned around again, it was to find a coughing, brown-haired human staggering out of the fuselage. He was covered in soot, and he looked so stunned and scorched that it seemed a miracle he was moving at all.

“Jag?” Jaina gasped.

She and Zekk started forward to help, but Fel merely stooped down and depressed a button on the dead squad leader’s forearm.

The signaling unit emitted a single loud beep.

Fel did not even glance in Jaina and Zekk’s direction. He simply turned away and hurled himself over the far side of the dune.

Jaina and Zekk spun back toward their companions. “Run!”

Jaina’s warning was hardly necessary. The rest of the Jedi were already turning away from the confused commandos, Force-leaping toward the bottom of the dune.

Jaina and Zekk found Jacen and adjusted their own leap so they came down on the slope next to him.

“You planned that!” Jaina accused her brother.

“Planned what?” Jacen asked.

He leapt the rest of the way to the bottom of the dune, where he was joined by Tahiri, Tesar, and Lowbacca. Jaina and Zekk landed next to the group an instant later.

“The vape charges!” Zekk accused.

“You helped Jag!” Jaina added. As Jaina made her accusation, she and Zekk were turning back toward the bomb—now about three hundred meters above, still at the top of the dune. “You don’t want us to recover this weapon!”

“That’s ridiculous. I was only trying to save Jag’s life.” Jacen’s voice was calm and smooth. “I thought you would thank me for that.”

“Ask Jag to thank you,” Jaina snapped.

She and Zekk raised their hands, reaching out to grasp the vape charges in the Force, but they were too late. A white flash swallowed the crest of the dune. They threw up their arms to shield their eyes, then heard a deep growl reverberating across the desert and felt the sand shuddering beneath their feet.

When they looked up, the top of the dune was gone—and so was the bomb.

ONE

STAR POND HAD calmed into a dark mirror, and the kaddyr bugs had fallen mysteriously silent. The entire Jedi academy had descended into uneasy stillness, and Luke knew it was time. He ended the meditation with a breath, then unfolded his legs—he had been floating cross-legged in the air—and lowered his feet to the pavilion floor.

Mara was instantly at his side, taking his arm in case he was too weak to stand. “How do you feel?”

Luke’s entire body felt stiff and sore, his head was aching, and his hands were trembling. He tested his legs and found them a little wobbly.

“I’m fine,” he said. His stomach felt as empty as space. “A little hungry, maybe.”

“I’ll bet.” Continuing to hold his arm, Mara turned to leave the meditation pavilion. “Let’s get you something to eat . . . and some rest.”

Luke did not follow her. “I can last another hour.” Through the Force, he could feel nearly the entire Jedi order gathered in the lecture hall, waiting to learn why he had summoned them. “We need to do this now.”

“Luke, you look like you’ve been hanging out in wampa caves again,” Mara said. “You need to rest.”

“Mara, it’s time,” Luke insisted. “Is Ben there?”

“I don’t know,” Mara said.

Although their son was finally beginning to show some interest in the Force, he continued to shut himself off from his parents. Luke and Mara were saddened and a little disturbed by Ben’s detachment, but they were determined not to push. The turmoil in the Force during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong had left him somewhat mistrustful of the Jedi way of life, and they both knew that if he was ever going to follow in their footsteps, he would have to find his own way onto the path.

“Does Ben really need to be part of this?” Mara’s tone suggested the answer she wanted to hear.

“Sorry, but I think he does,” Luke said. “Now that Jacen has convinced him that it’s safe to open himself to the Force, Ben will have to make the same decision as everyone else. All the students will.”

Mara frowned. “Shouldn’t the children wait until they’re older?”

“We’ll ask them again when they become apprentices,” Luke said. “I don’t know whether I’m about to save the Jedi order or destroy it—”

“I do,” Mara interrupted. “The Masters are pulling the order in ten different directions. You have to do this, or they’ll tear it apart.”

“It certainly looks that way,” Luke said. With Corran Horn and Kyp Durron at odds over the anti-Killik policies of the Galactic Alliance, it seemed as though every Master in the order was trying to impose his or her own compromise on the Jedi. “But whether this is successful or not, it’s going to change the Jedi order. If some students don’t want to be a part of that, it’s better for everyone to find out now.”

Mara considered this, then sighed. “I’ll have Nanna bring Ben over.” She pulled out her comlink and stepped to one side of the pavilion. “And I’ll let Kam and Tionne know you want the students there.”

“Good. Thank you.”

Luke continued to look out over the dark water. He had spent the last week deep in meditation, sending a Force-call to the entire Jedi order. It would have been easier to use the HoloNet, but many Jedi—such as Jaina and her team—were in places the HoloNet did not cover. Besides, Luke was trying to make a point, to subtly remind the rest of the order that all Jedi answered to the same authority.

And the strategy had worked. In every arm of the galaxy, Masters had suspended negotiations, Jedi Knights had dropped investigations, apprentices had withdrawn from combat. There were a few Jedi stranded on off-lane worlds without transport and a couple unable to suspend their activities without fatal consequences, but for the most part, his summons had been honored. Only two Jedi Knights had willfully ignored his call, and their decision had surprised Luke less than it had hurt him.

A familiar presence drew near on the path behind the meditation pavilion, and Luke spoke without turning around. “Hello, Jacen.”

Jacen stopped at the entrance to the pavilion. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

Luke continued to look out on the pond. “Come to explain why Jaina and Zekk aren’t here?”

“It’s not their fault,” Jacen said, still behind Luke. “We’ve had some, uh, disagreements.”

“Don’t make excuses for them, Jacen,” Mara said, closing her comlink. “If you felt Luke’s summons, so did they.”

“It’s not that simple,” Jacen said. “They may have thought I was trying to trick them.”

Luke finally turned around. “Tesar and Lowbacca didn’t seem to think so.” He had felt three other Jedi Knights return to Ossus along with Jacen. “Neither did Tahiri.”

“What can I say?” Jacen spread his hands. “I’m not their brother.”

Mara frowned. “Jacen, your sister used you as a pretext and we all know it. Let’s leave it at that.” She turned to Luke. “Nanna’s on the way with Ben, and Kam says the students have all been waiting in the lecture hall since this morning.”

“Thanks.” Luke joined her and Jacen at the rear of the pavilion, then gestured at the path leading toward the lecture hall. “Walk with us, Jacen. We need to talk.”

“I know.” Jacen fell in at Luke’s side, between him and Mara. “You must be furious about the raid on the Chiss supply depot.”

“I was,” Luke admitted. “But your aunt convinced me that if you were involved, there had to be a good reason.”

“I was more than involved,” Jacen said. “It was my idea.”

“Your idea?” Mara echoed.

Jacen was silent a moment, and Luke could feel him struggling with himself, trying to decide how much we could tell them. He was trying to protect something—something as important to him as the Force itself.

Finally, Jacen said, “I had a vision.” He stopped and looked into the crown of a red-fronded dbergo tree. “I saw the Chiss launch a surprise attack against the Killiks.”

“And so you decided to provoke the Chiss just to be certain?” Luke asked. “Surely, it would have been better to warn the Killiks.”

Jacen’s fear chilled the Force. “There was more,” he said. “I saw the Killiks mount a counterattack. The war spread to the Galactic Alliance.”

“And that’s why you attacked the Chiss supply depot,” Mara surmised. “To protect the Galactic Alliance.”

“Among other things,” Jacen said. “I had to change the dynamics of the situation. If the war had started that way, it wouldn’t have stopped. Ever.” He turned to Luke. “Uncle Luke, I saw the galaxy die.”

“Die?” An icy ball formed in Luke’s stomach. Considering the turmoil the order had been in at the time, he was beginning to understand why Jacen had felt it necessary to take such dire action. “Because the Chiss launched a surprise attack?”

Jacen nodded. “That’s why I convinced Jaina and the others to help me. To prevent the surprise attack from happening.”

“I see.” Luke fell quiet, wondering what he would have done, had he been in Jacen’s place and experienced such a terrifying vision. “I understand why you felt you had to act, Jacen. But trying to change what you see in a vision is dangerous—even for a Jedi of your talent and power. What you witnessed was only one of many possible futures.”

“One that I can’t permit,” Jacen replied quickly.

Again, Luke felt a wave of protectiveness from Jacen—protectiveness and secrecy.

“You were protecting something,” Luke said. “What?”

“Nothing . . . and everything.” Jacen spread his hands, and Luke felt him draw in on himself in the Force. “This.”

They came to the Crooked Way, a serpentine path of rectangular stepping-stones, set askew to each other so that walkers would be forced to slow down and concentrate on their journey through the garden. Luke allowed Mara to lead the way, then fell in behind Jacen, watching with interest as his nephew instinctively took the smoothest, most fluid possible route up the walkway.

“Jacen, do you know that you have prevented what you saw in your vision?” Luke asked. He was meandering back and forth behind his nephew, absentmindedly allowing his feet to choose their route from one stone to the next. “Can you be certain that your own actions won’t bring the vision to pass?”

Jacen missed the next stone and would have stepped onto the soft carpet of moss had he not sensed his error and caught his balance. He stopped, then pivoted around to face Luke.

“Is that a rhetorical question, Master?” he asked.

“Not entirely,” Luke replied. He was concerned that Jacen had fixed the future again, as he had when he had reached across time and spoken to Leia during a vision at the Crash site on Yoggoy. “I need to be sure I know everything.”

“Even Yoda didn’t know everything,” Jacen said, smiling. “But the future is still in motion, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Thank you,” Luke said. Fearing dangerous ripples in the Force, Luke had asked Jacen not to reach into the future again. “But I still wish you hadn’t acted so . . . forcefully.”

“I had to do something,” Jacen said. “And when it comes to the future, Uncle Luke, don’t we always plot the next jump blind?”

“We do,” Luke said. “That’s why it is usually wise to be cautious.”

“I see.” Jacen glanced up the Crooked Way, where the steeply pitched roof of the lecture hall loomed behind a hedge of bambwood. “So you summoned the entire Jedi order to Ossus to do something cautious?”

Luke put on an exaggerated frown. “I said usually, Jacen.” He let out a melodramatic sigh to show that he was not truly angry, then said, “Go on ahead. I can see that you’re a disrespectful young nephew who delights in embarrassing his elders.”

“Of course, Master.”

Jacen smiled and bowed, then started up the Crooked Way, now taking the straightest possible line toward the lecture hall. Luke watched him go, wondering whether the jump he was about to make with the future of the order was any less bold—or blind—than the one his nephew had made in attacking the supply depot.

“You have to do something,” Mara said, sensing the drift of his thoughts. “And this is the best choice.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s what worries me.”

Luke followed, taking his time, concentrating on the musky smell of the garden soil, deliberately focusing his thoughts on something other than the address he was about to give. He already knew what he needed to say—that had grown very clear to him as he learned more about the growing rift in the order—and overthinking it now would only interfere with the message. Better to let the words come naturally, to speak from his heart and hope the Jedi would listen with theirs.

By the time they reached the eastern gable of the lecture hall, a familiar calm had come over Luke. He could sense the Jedi waiting inside the building, tense with anticipation, all hoping that he could resolve the impasse that was threatening to tear the order apart. That much was clear, but he sensed more: frustration, animosity, even bitterness and rage. The disagreements had grown intense and personal, to the point that several Jedi Masters could barely stand to be in the same room.

Luke slid open the instructor’s door and led the way down a short, wood-floored hallway. As they approached the sliding panel at the end, the Jedi on the other side sensed their presence, and the low murmur in the auditorium died away.

Mara kissed Luke on the cheek, then whispered, “You can do this, Luke.”

“I know,” Luke said. “But keep a stun grenade handy just in case.”

Mara smiled. “You won’t need a grenade—they’re going to be stunned.”

She pulled the panel aside, revealing a simple but soaring auditorium with pillars of pale wood. The Jedi were gathered in the front of the room. Kyp Durron and his supporters were clustered near the left wall, and Corran Horn and his group were bunched along the right. Jacen and Ben sat in the middle with the Solos and Saba Sebatyne, while the students were interspersed in small groups along both sides of the center aisle.

Luke was shocked by how small the gathering looked. Including the students and Han, there were just under three hundred people in a hall that had been designed to hold two thousand—the academy’s entire complement of Jedi and support staff. The vacant benches were a stark reminder of how small a bulwark the Jedi truly were against the dark forces that always seemed to be gathering in the unwatched corners of the galaxy.

Luke stopped in the middle of the dais and took a deep breath. He had rehearsed his speech a dozen times, but he still had more butterflies in his stomach than when he had faced Darth Vader on Cloud City. So much depended on what he was about to say . . . and on how the Jedi responded to it.

“Thirty-five standard years ago, I became the last guardian of an ancient order that had thrived for a thousand generations. During all that time, no evil dared challenge its power, no honest being ever questioned its integrity. Yet fall it did, brought low by the treachery of a Sith Lord who disguised himself as a friend and an ally. Only a handful of Masters survived, hiding in deserts and swamps so that the bright light that was the Jedi order would not be extinguished.”

Luke paused here and exchanged gazes with Leia. Her face had been lined by four decades of sacrifice and service to the galaxy, yet her brown eyes still shined with the intensity of her youth. At the moment, they were also shining with curiosity. Luke had not discussed what he intended to say even with her.

He looked back to the other Jedi. “Under the guidance of two of those Masters, I became the instrument of the Jedi’s return, and I have dedicated myself to rekindling the light of their order. Ours may be a smaller, paler beacon than the one that once lit the way for the Old Republic, but it has been growing, both in size and in brilliance.”

Luke felt the anticipation in the Force beginning to shift toward optimism, but he also sensed concern rising in his sister. As a Force-gifted politician and a former Chief of State, she realized what he was doing—and she could see where it would lead. Luke pushed her worries out of his mind; he was doing this to save the order, not to aggrandize himself.

“We have been growing,” he continued, “until now.”

Luke looked first toward Corran and his supporters, then toward Kyp and his.

“Now we are threatened by a different enemy, one that I brought into our midst through my misunderstanding of the old practices. In my arrogance, I believed we had found a better way, one more in tune with the challenges we face in our time. I was wrong.”

A murmur of soft protest rustled through the hall, and the Force near both Kyp and Corran grew unsettled with guilt. Luke raised his hand for silence.

“In the order I envisioned, we served the Force by following our own consciences. We taught our apprentices well, and we trusted them to follow their own hearts.” Luke looked directly into Leia’s troubled eyes. “It was a splendid dream, but it has been growing more impractical for some time now.”

Luke returned his gaze to the other Jedi. “My mistake was in forgetting that good beings can disagree. They can evaluate all of the evidence and study it from every angle and still reach opposite conclusions. And each side can believe with pure hearts that only their view is right.

“When that happens, it’s easy to lose sight of something far more important than who’s right and who’s wrong.”

Luke fixed his eyes on Kyp, who managed to avoid looking away despite the color that came to his face. “When the Jedi are at odds with each other, they are at odds with the Force.”

Luke shifted his gaze to Corran, who responded with a contrite lowering of the eyes. “And when the Jedi are at odds with the Force, they can’t perform their duty to themselves, to the order, or to the Alliance.”

The hall fell utterly silent. Luke remained quiet—not to build the suspense, but to give every Jedi time to reflect on his or her own part in the crisis.

Ben and the students were sitting very still, with their chins pressed to their chests. But their eyes were darting from side to side, looking for clues as to how they should respond. Tesar Sebatyne flattened his scales—betraying the shame he felt for helping precipitate the crisis, and Lowbacca slumped his enormous shoulders. Tahiri sat up straight and stared stonily ahead, her stiff bearing an unsuccessful attempt to disguise her guilty feelings. Only Leia seemed unaffected by the subtle chastisement. She sat with her fingers steepled in front of her, studying Luke with a furrowed brow and a Force presence so guarded he could not read her emotions.

When the mood in the hall began to shift toward regret, Luke spoke again. “I’ve meditated at length, and I’ve concluded that how we respond to a crisis—the one facing us now or any other—is far less important than responding to it together. Even with the Force to guide us, we’re only mortal. We are going to make mistakes.

“But mistakes by themselves will never destroy us. As long as we work together, we’ll always have the strength to recover. What we can’t recover from is fighting among ourselves. It will leave us too exhausted to face our enemies. And that is what Lomi Plo and the Dark Nest want. It’s the only way they can defeat us.”

Luke took a deep breath. “So I’m asking each of you to rethink your commitment to the Jedi. If you can’t place the good of the order above all else and follow the direction chosen by your superiors, I’m asking you to leave. If you have other duties or loyalties that come before the order, I’m asking you to leave. If you cannot be a Jedi Knight first, I’m asking you not to be a Jedi Knight at all.”

Luke took his time, looking from one shocked face to another. Only Leia seemed dismayed—but he had expected that.

“Think about your choice carefully,” he said. “When you are ready, come to me and let me know what you have decided.”

TWO

A STUNNED SILENCE still lay over the lecture hall as Leia stepped onto the dais and started after her brother. As a Jedi Knight, it was hardly her place to challenge a decree from the order’s most senior Master, but she knew what Luke was doing . . . even if he did not. She entered the small corridor behind the dais, and that was when Han caught up and took her arm.

He slid the panel shut behind them, then whispered, “Hold on! Don’t you want to talk this over before you quit?”

“Relax, Han. I’m not leaving the order.” Leia glanced down the corridor, toward the golden light spilling out the entrance to the lecture hall’s small library. Inside, calmly awaiting the storm, she could sense her brother’s presence. “I just need to talk some sense into Luke before this gets out of hand.”

“Are you sure?” Han asked. “I mean, you’re not even a Master.”

“I’m his sister,” Leia retorted. “That gives me special privileges.”

She strode down the corridor and entered the library without announcing herself. Luke was seated on a mat at the far end of the room, with a low writing table before him and the HoloNet access terminal at his back. Mara stood beside him at one end of the table, her green eyes as hard and unfathomable as an eumlar crystal.

When she saw Leia, Mara cocked her brow. “I doubt you’re here to pledge your obedience to the order.”

“I’m not.” Leia stopped in front of the table and glared down at Luke. “Do you know what you’ve just done?”

“Of course,” Luke said. “It’s called the Rubogean Gambit.”

Leia’s aggravation gave way to shock. “You’re taking control of the order as a ploy?”

“He has to do something,” Mara said. “The order is falling apart.”

“But the Rubogean Gambit?” Leia protested. “You can’t be serious!”

“I’m afraid so,” Luke said. “I wish I wasn’t.”

Leia reached out to her brother in the Force and realized he was telling the truth. He was filled with disappointment—in Kyp, Corran, and the other Masters, in himself, in her. The last thing he wanted was to take personal control of the order, but Mara was right. Something had to be done, and—as usual—it fell to Luke to do it.

Leia considered her brother’s plan for a moment, growing calmer as she reflected on his other options—or rather, his lack of them.

Finally, she said, “Your provocation isn’t strong enough. Most of the Jedi in that hall want you to take over. They won’t resist you.”

“I hope they’ll change their minds once they reflect on it,” Luke answered. “If not, then I’ll have to take control of the order.”

“For its own good.” Leia’s rusty political instincts began to trip alarms inside her head. “Do you know how many despots have said the same thing to me?”

“Luke is not a despot.” Mara’s voice grew a little heated. “He doesn’t even want control.”

“I know.” Leia kept her gaze on her brother. “But that doesn’t make this any less dangerous. If the gambit fails, you’ll be reducing the order to a personality cult.”