Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy II: Dark Apprentice Page 7

  The moss had withered not long after Gantoris had taken up residence in the chambers.…

  Outside, the jungle of Yavin 4 simmered with restless life, rustling, chittering, singing, and shrieking, as stronger creatures fed, as weaker creatures died.

  Gantoris continued to work. He no longer needed sleep. He could draw the energy he required using different methods, secrets he had been taught that the other students did not suspect. His unbraided black hair stuck out in wiry shocks, and an acrid, gunpowdery smell clung to his cloak, his skin.

  He focused on the components scattered across the table: silver electronics, dull metal, glinting glass. He slid his fingertips across the cold bits of wire, picked up a sharp-edged microcontrol box with trembling hands. Widening his eyes in annoyance, Gantoris stared at his hands until the trembling stopped, then set to work again.

  He understood how the pieces would all fit together. Once he knew, once he had drawn together sufficient Jedi knowledge, everything seemed obvious to him. Obvious.

  The elegant energy blade served as the personal weapon of the Jedi, a symbol of authority, skill, and honor. Cruder weapons could cause more random destruction, but no other artifact evoked as much legend and mystery as the lightsaber. Gantoris would settle for nothing else.

  Every Jedi built his own lightsaber. It was a rite of passage in the training of a new student. Master Skywalker had not yet begun to teach him, though Gantoris had waited and waited. He knew he was the best of the students—and he chose not to wait any longer.

  Master Skywalker did not know everything a true Jedi Master must teach new apprentices. Skywalker had gaps in his knowledge, blank spaces he either did not understand or did not wish to teach. But Master Skywalker was not the only source of Jedi knowledge.…

  Once he had forsaken sleep, Gantoris had taken to roaming the halls of the Great Temple, sliding barefoot and in silence along the cold floors that seemed to drink heat, no matter how warm the jungle had become during the day.

  Sometimes he wandered out into the rain forest at night, surrounded by mists and singing insects. The dew splashed his feet, his robe, making indecipherable patterns across his body like coded messages. Gantoris walked unarmed, silently daring any predator to challenge him, knowing that his Jedi skills would be proof against mere claws and fangs; but nothing molested him, and only once did he hear a large beast charging away from him through the underbrush.

  But the dark and mysterious voice that came to him in his nightmares had given him instructions on how to build a lightsaber. Gantoris had been driven with a new purpose. A true Jedi was resourceful. A true Jedi could make do. A true Jedi found what he needed.

  Using his ability to manipulate simple objects, he had broken past the seals into the locked Rebel control rooms in the temple’s lower levels. Banks of machinery, computers, landing-grid panels, and automated defense systems sat covered with grime from a decade of abandonment. Master Skywalker had repaired little of the equipment. Jedi apprentices had no need for most of it.

  Quietly and alone, Gantoris had removed access panels, stripped out microcomponents, focusing lenses, laser diodes, and a cylindrical casing twenty-seven centimeters long.…

  It had taken him three nights, tearing apart the silent equipment, stirring up dust and spores, sending rodents and arachnids scurrying to safety. But Gantoris had found what he needed.

  Now he assembled the pieces.

  Under the garish light Gantoris picked up the cylindrical casing. He used a spot laser-welder to cut notches for the control switches.

  Each Jedi built his own lightsaber to a range of specifications and personal preferences. Some included safety switches that shut off the glowing blade if the handle was released, while other weapons could be locked on.

  Gantoris had a few ideas of his own.

  He installed a small but efficient power cell. It snapped into place, connecting precisely. Gantoris sighed, concentrated a moment to still his trembling hands again, then picked up another set of delicate wires.

  He flinched, whirling to look behind him in the shadows. He thought he had heard someone breathing, the rustle of dark garments. Gantoris stared with his red-rimmed eyes, trying to discern a dim human form in the corner.

  “Speak, if you’re there!” Gantoris cried. His voice sounded harsh, as if he had swallowed burning coals.

  When the shadows did not answer him, he sighed with cool relief. His mouth tasted dry, and soreness worked its way through his throat. But he willed away the feeling. He could drink water in the morning. A Jedi endured.

  Building the lightsaber was his personal test. He had to do it alone.

  Next, he took out the most precious piece of the weapon. Three corusca jewels, cast out from the high-pressure hell of the gas giant Yavin’s core. When he and his addlebrained companion Streen had discovered the new Massassi temple far out in the jungle, Gantoris had found these gems on the steep obsidian walls. Embedded among the hypnotic pictographs etched into the black volcanic glass, the jewels had glinted in the hazy orange daylight.

  Though they had remained untouched for thousands of years, these three gems had flaked off as Gantoris stared at them. They fell to his feet in the crushed lava rock surrounding the lost temple. Gantoris had picked up the gems, cupping the warm crystals in his hands as Streen wandered among the obelisks, chattering to himself.

  Now Gantoris removed the jewels—one watery pink, another deep red, and the third starkly transparent with an inner electric blue fire along the edges of the facets. He was meant to have these jewels; they were destined for his own lightsaber. He knew that now. He understood all of his former nightmares, his former fears.

  Most lightsabers had only a single jewel that focused the pure energy from the power cell into a tight beam. By adding more than one gem, Gantoris’s blade would have unexpected capabilities to surprise Master Skywalker.

  Finally, his fingers raw and aching, Gantoris sat up. Pain embroidered firelines across his neck, shoulders, and back, but he washed it away with a simple Jedi exercise. Outside the Great Temple he could hear the changing symphony of jungle sounds as nocturnal creatures found their dens, and daylight animals began to stir.

  Gantoris held the cylindrical handle of his lightsaber and inspected it under the glowlamp’s unforgiving light. Craftsmanship was everything in a weapon like this. A barely noticeable variance could cause a disastrous blunder. But Gantoris had done everything right. He had taken no shortcuts, allowed no sloppiness. His weapon was perfect.

  He pushed the activator button. With a snap-hiss, the awesome blade thrummed and pulsed like a living creature. The chain of three jewels gave the energy blade a pale purplish hue, white at the core, amethyst at the fringes, with rainbow colors rippling up and down the beam.

  Accustomed to the dimness, Gantoris squeezed his eyes to block out the glare, then gradually opened them again, staring in amazement at what he had made.

  He moved the blade, and the air crackled around him. The hum sounded like thunder, but none of the other students would hear it through the mammoth thickness of the stone walls. In his grip the blade felt like a winged serpent, sending the sharp scent of ozone curling to his nose.

  He slashed back and forth. The lightsaber became a part of him, an extension of his arm connected through the Force to strike down any enemy. He sensed no heat from the vibrating blade, only a cold annihilating fire.

  He deactivated the blade, awash in euphoria, and carefully hid the completed lightsaber under his sleeping pallet.

  “Now Master Skywalker will see I am a true Jedi,” he said to the shadows along the walls. But no one answered him.

  6

  The private investigatory proceedings of the New Republic’s ruling Council stood closed against Admiral Ackbar. He waited in the anteroom outside, staring at the tall steelstone door as if it were a wall blocking the end of his life. He stared unblinking at the designs and scrollwork modeled by the Emperor Palpatine after ancient Sith hieroglyphic
s, and they disturbed him.

  Ackbar sat on the cold synthetic-stone bench, feeling only his misery, despair, and failure. He nursed his bandaged left arm and felt pain slice up and down his biceps where tiny needles held the slashed salmon-colored skin together. Ackbar had refused standard treatment by medical droid or healing in a bacta tank programmed for Calamarian physiology. He preferred to let the painful recuperation remind him of the destruction he had caused on Vortex.

  He cocked his enormous head, listening to the rise and fall of heated voices through the closed door. He could make out only a mingled murmur of mixed voices, some strident, some insistent. He looked down and self-consciously brushed at his clean white admiral’s uniform.

  His remaining injuries seemed insignificant compared to the pain inside him. In his mind he kept seeing the crystalline Cathedral of Winds shatter around him in an avalanche of shards, hurling a storm of glassy daggers in all directions. He saw the bodies of winged Vors tumbling around him, slaughtered by the razor-edged crystal sabers. Ackbar had ejected Leia to safety, but he wished he had been brave enough to switch off the crash field, because he did not want to live with such disgrace. Ackbar had been piloting the deadly ship, no one else. He had crashed into the precious Cathedral of Winds. No one else.

  He looked up at the sound of shuffling footsteps and saw another Calamarian approaching tentatively down the rose-hued corridors. The other ducked his head, but swiveled his great fish eyes up to look at his admiral.

  “Terpfen,” Ackbar said. His voice sounded listless, like words dropped onto the polished floor, but he tried to dredge up enthusiasm. “You’ve come after all.”

  “I could never desert you, Admiral. The Calamarian crewmen remain your firm supporters, even after.…”

  Ackbar nodded, knowing the unshakable loyalty of his chief starship mechanic. As with many of his people, Terpfen had been taken away from his watery homeworld, kidnapped by Imperial enslavers, and forced to work on designing and refining their Star Destroyers with the renowned Calamarian starship-building expertise. But Terpfen had attempted sabotage and had been tortured. Severely. The scars still showed on his battered head.

  During the Imperial occupation of the planet Calamari, Ackbar himself had been pressed into service as a reluctant aid to Moff Tarkin. He had served Tarkin for several years until he finally escaped during a Rebel attack.

  “Have you completed your investigation?” Ackbar asked. “Have you gone over the records that survived the crash?”

  Terpfen turned his head away. He clasped his broad flipper-hands together. His skin flushed with splotches of bright maroon, showing his embarrassment and shame. “I have already filed my report with the New Republic Council.” He looked meaningfully at the closed door of the chamber. “I suspect they are discussing it even now.”

  Ackbar felt as if he had just attempted to swim under an ice floe. “And what did you find?” he said in a firm voice, trying to resurrect the power of command.

  “I found no indication of mechanical failure, Admiral. I’ve gone over the crash tapes again and again, and I have simulated the flight path through the recorded wind patterns on Vortex. I continue to come up with the same answer. Nothing was wrong with your ship.” He looked up at the admiral then turned away again. Ackbar could tell that this report was as difficult for Terpfen to say as it was for Ackbar to hear.

  “I checked your ship myself before you took off for Vortex. I found no indications of mechanical instabilities. I suppose I could have missed something.…”

  Ackbar shook his head. “Not you, Terpfen. I know your work too well.”

  Terpfen continued in a quieter voice. “I can reach only one conclusion from the data, Admiral—” But Terpfen’s voice cut off, as if he refused to speak the inevitable.

  Ackbar did it for him. “Pilot error,” he said. “I caused the crash. It’s my fault. I’ve known it all along.”

  Terpfen stood; his head hung so low that he showed only the bulging, sacklike dome of his cranium. “I wish there was some way I could prove otherwise, Admiral.”

  Ackbar extended a flipper-hand and placed it on Terpfen’s gray crewman’s uniform. “I know you’ve done your best. Now please do me one more favor. Outfit another B-wing for my personal use and provision it for a long journey. I’ll be flying alone.”

  “Someone might object to having you fly again, Admiral,” Terpfen said, “but don’t worry. I can find some way around the problem. Where will you be going?”

  “Home,” Ackbar answered, “after I tend to some unfinished business.”

  Terpfen saluted smartly. “Your ship will be waiting for you, sir.”

  Ackbar felt a hard knot in his chest as he returned the salute. He stepped forward to the closed steelstone door and pounded on the ornate surface, demanding to be let in.

  The heavy door groaned open on automatic hinges. Ackbar stood at the threshold as the members of the ruling Council turned to look at him.

  The flowstone seats were sculpted and polished to a high luster, including the empty chair that still bore his own name. The air was too dry for his nostrils and stank with the underlying dusty smell of a museum. He could detect the pungent nervous odor of human sweat mixed with the peppery steam from their chosen hot drinks and refreshments.

  Obese Senator Hrekin Thorm waved a pudgy hand at Ackbar. “Why don’t we make him lead the reparations team? That seems appropriate to me.”

  “I wouldn’t think the Vors want him anywhere near their planet,” Senator Bel-Iblis said.

  “The Vors haven’t asked us to help them rebuild at all,” Leia Organa Solo said, “but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it.”

  “We’re lucky the Vors are not as emotional as other races. This is already a terrible tragedy, but it does not seem likely it will turn into a galactic incident,” Mon Mothma said.

  Gripping the edge of the table, she stood and finally acknowledged Ackbar’s presence. Her skin looked pale, her face gaunt, her eyes and cheeks sunken. She had skipped many important meetings lately. Ackbar wondered if the Vortex tragedy had worsened her health.

  “Admiral,” Mon Mothma said, “these proceedings are closed. We will summon you after we have taken a vote.” Her voice seemed stern and cracking, devoid of the compassion that had launched her career in galactic politics.

  Minister of State Leia Organa Solo looked at him with her dark eyes. A flood of sympathy crossed her face, but Ackbar turned away with a stab of anger and embarrassment. He knew Leia would argue his case most strongly, and he expected support from General Rieekan and General Dodonna; but he did not know how Senators Garm Bel-Iblis, Hrekin Thorm, or even Mon Mothma herself would vote.

  That doesn’t matter, Ackbar thought. He would remove their need to decide, remove the possibility of further humiliation. “Perhaps I can make these deliberations easier on all of us,” Ackbar said.

  “What do you mean, Admiral?” Mon Mothma said, frowning at him. Her face was seamed with deep lines.

  Leia half rose as she suddenly understood. “Don’t—”

  Ackbar made a decisive gesture with his left fin-hand, and Leia reluctantly sat down again.

  He touched the left breast on his pristine-white uniform, fumbling with the catch as he removed his admiral’s-rank insignia. “I have caused enormous pain and suffering to the people of Vortex. I have brought immense embarrassment to the New Republic, and I have called down terrible shame upon myself. I hereby resign as commander of the New Republic Fleet, effective immediately. I regret the circumstances of my departure, but I am proud of the years I have served the Alliance. I only wish I could have done more.”

  He placed his insignia on the creamy alabaster shelf in front of the empty Council seat that had once been his own.

  In shocked silence the other Council members stared at him like a mute tribunal. Before they could voice their mandatory—and probably insincere—objections, Ackbar turned and strode out of the room, walking as tall as he dared, yet feeling crus
hed and insignificant.

  He went back toward his quarters to pack his most prized possessions before heading to the hangar bay, where he would take the ship Terpfen had promised him. He had one place to visit first, and then he would return to his homeworld of Calamari.

  If General Obi-Wan Kenobi could vanish into obscurity on a desert planet like Tatooine, Ackbar could do the same and live out the rest of his life among the lush seatree forests under the seas.

  With the pretense of taking out a B-wing fighter to test its response under extreme stress, Terpfen soared away from Coruscant. The other distraught Calamarian crewmen wished him luck before he departed, assuming he intended to continue his desperate work to clear Admiral Ackbar’s name.

  But just before the jump into hyperspace, Terpfen entered a new series of coordinates into the navicomputer.

  The B-wing lurched with a blast of hyperdrive engines. Starlines appeared around him, and the ship snapped into the frenzied, incomprehensible swirl of hyperspace. He reflexively slid the nictating membrane over his glassy eyes.

  Terpfen felt shudders pass through his body as he strained to resist the calling. But he knew by now, after all these years, that he could do nothing to fight it. Screaming nightmares never let him forget his ordeal in the hellish conditioning on the Imperial military training planet of Carida.

  The scars on his battered head were not just from torture, but from Imperial vivisection, where the doctors had sawed open his skull and scooped out portions of his brain—segments that controlled a Calamarian’s loyalty, his volition, and his resistance to special commands. The cruel xenosurgeons had replaced the missing areas of Terpfen’s brain with specially grown organic circuits that mimicked the size, shape, and composition of the removed tissue.

  The organic circuits were perfectly camouflaged and could resist the most penetrating medical scan, but they made him a helpless cyborg, a perfect spy and saboteur who could not think for himself when the Imperials wanted him to think their thoughts. The circuits left him sufficient mental capacity to play his part, to make his own excuses each time the Imperials summoned him.…