She centered her thoughts, making sure her reflexes were primed and
ready for action. Tenel Ka relied on her body and pressed it to its
limits, but she always knew how far she could take it. So far, her
muscles had never let her down.
Slowly, she opened her cool, granite-gray eyes and looked at the young
man who stood in fro nt of her, ready for the next duel.
He grinned at her. "Good against remotes is one thing, Tenel Ka," Jacen
said, "but good against a real opponent? That's something else."
"This is a fact."
Depressing a button, Jacen switched on his light 50 LIGHTSABERS
^ saber. The emerald-green blade sprang forth, snapping and glittering
with power. "Hey, I'll try not to be too hard on you."
Tenel Ka's fingers found the recessed power button on the rancor-tooth
handle. A shimmering gray-white blade extended like crackling electric
fog shot through with golden sparks. The lightsaber's color reminded her
of the hazy crystals she had taken from the lava tube.
"And I will try not to be too hard on you, my friend Jacen," she said.
Tenel Ka tested the weapon by turning her wrist, flicking the blade from
side to side. The beam sparked and sizzled as it encountered moisture in
the air.
"Be careful," Master Skywalker said from his vantage point on the burned
tree trunk. "Don't get cocky. You both have a great deal to learn."
"Don't worry, Uncle Luke," Jacen said. "I know it was a bad time for me,
but I did have some training at the Shadow Academy." He grinned.
"Fighting Tenel Ka will be more of a challenge than battling holographic
monsters, though."
Jaina cleared her throat and spoke from where she sat, sweating and worn
out after her session with Lowbacca. "And better than fighting your own
sister in disguise?"
"That too," Jacen said.
Tenel Ka flicked her lightsaber back and forth again, taking a step
closer to Jacen. She squared her shoulders, knowing that she stood
taller than her good-humored friend. The lightsaber thrummed with power
in her hand. "Are we going to talk all day, Jacen?" she said. "Or will
you leave time for me to defeat you before the morning is ove r.
Jacen laughed. "Hey, we're not supposed to be enemies, Tenel Ka. It's
just a practice session She nodded. "This is a fact. Even so, we are
opponents."
She swung her lightsaber slowly enough that he wouldn't perceive it as a
real attack, but instinctively Jacen brought up his own weapon. Their
blades intersected with sizzling force.
Jacen blinked in surprise, then drew back and struck against her
nebulous gold-shot blade, testing.
"All right then-let's go, Tenel Ka!"
She deftly sidestepped the thrust and returned with a parry of her own
as he stumbled to regain his balance. Had he been a real enemy, she
could have finished him then, but she pulled her blade aside for a split
second, just to demonstrate that Jacen had let his guard drop-a lesson a
Jedi Knight would need to learn to avoid defeat.
Unexpectedly, Jacen whirled and came up with a backhanded strike that
forced her to retaliate. "I figure we should do something about that
lack of confidence you've got, Tenel Ka," Jacen said, still grinning.
"I have no such lack," she said, and found that LIGHTSABERS
^ perspiration had broken out on her forehead. She swung, and Jacen
caught her blow on his blade, laughing. She noted the degree of strength
he used, the speed with which he maneuvered his weapon.
They clashed again. Her cheerful friend, usually so scattered and
disorganized, was giving her a surprisingly difficult workout.
"Hey, Tenel Ka," Jacen said as he struck twice more, as if he always
held conversations while fighting with a lightsaber, "you know why a
wampa snow mo nster has such long arms?" He paused for just a beat.
"Because his hands are so far away from his body!"
Lowbacca groaned with miserable laughter, prompting the little droid at
his waist to speak up in a tinny voice. "I fail to perceive the
Teedee said.
"Your jokes cannot distract me, Jacen," Tenel Ka said, swinging her
lightsaber once more. Did he really think he could break her
concentration so easily? "I do not find them humorous."
Jacen sighed as he met her blade with his own. "I know. I've been trying
to get you to laugh ever since I've known you."
Tenel Ka watched her opponent closely, trying to judge from the tension
in his muscles how soon he intended to make a surprise move, in which
direction he would react, when the motion of his blade was a genuine
attack and when it was merely a feint.
"Good," Master Skywalker said from where he watched. "Feel the Force.
The lightsaber is not just a weapon. It is an extension of yourself
Jacen pressed Tenel Ka hard, and she skipped backward a couple of paces.
It was obvious he was trying to drive her toward an outcropping of
broken boulders at the edge of the clearing. Jacen must have thought she
had forgotten about them, but Tenel Ka filed away every detail of her
surroundings in her mind.
Just as she reached the rocks, Jacen gave away ,his plans even more
clearly with a broad grin. He pushed forward abruptly, no doubt
expecting her to trip. But Tenel Ka leaped lightly backward over the
boulders and landed on the other side, her legs planted firmly in a
fighting stance. Suddenly foiled, Jacen stumbled and fell toward her,
almost hitting the rocks himself He came up sputtering in disbelief.
"Hey," he said, then smiled. "Good one!"
Tenel Ka stood waiting for him, her braided hair dangling about her
head, drenched with sweat.
Allowing herself a brief moment of self-indulgence, she switched the
lightsaber to her left hand to prove she could fight just as well with
either arm. She had practiced equally with her left and right hands,
knowing it might prove a useful skill sometime.
LIGHTSABERS
^
"Show-off," Jacen said. After a heartbeat of hesitation, he switched his
own blade to his left hand and charged at her, swinging hard with the
emerald-green lightsaber. She raised her own mistywhite and gold blade,
struck at him, then struck again. Sparks flew as the blades met.
When Jacen laughed with exhilaration, she allowed herself a satisfied
grin as well. "You are a good opponent, Jacen Solo," she said.
"You bet I am," he answered.
Tenel Ka knew that her skill was based on her prowess, her physical
ability. Though she had constructed a fine lightsaber, she would become
a great warrior because of her fighting abilities, not because of the
strength of any weapon, no matter how powerful.
Jacen's lightsaber pressed against hers, and she took a step back. They
stood deadlocked, slamming energy blade against impenetrable energy
blade.
Fiery electricity crackled, and the air thickened with the sharp,scent
of ozone. Tenel Ka pushed with all her strength, but Jacen countered
with equal force.
Her palm was sweaty, but her
hand maintained its grip on the
rancor-tooth handle. Inside, the components of her lightsaber vibrated,
as if struggling to maintain the full energy of the blade while Tenel Ka
pressed so furiously against an equally powerful weapon. She pushed
harder. The handle rattled.
Jacen grinned at her. "Hope you don't expect me to surrender too
easily."
"Perhaps you should," she panted, and pressed harder, ignoring the
strange, unsettling sensations from her weapon. She gritted her teeth.
Her arm strained. The lightsabers whined and buzzed. Jacen shoved back
with all his might. His eyes glittered with the effort.
Over by the edge of the clearing, Master Skywalker stood watching the
tense battle, as did Lowbacca and Jaina.
how best she could defeat Jacen and end this match.
Suddenly,.something changed inside her lightsaher. She heard a sharp
crack and then a loud hissing sizzle.
Jacen pressed harder with his emerald-green blade. For the briefest
instant, the golden sparks that shot through her white pulsating energy
beam flickered wildly. Her blade bluffed with static, grew less focused.
Intent on the battle, Jacen gave a final, extra push with all his
strength.
It happened all at once.
The power source in Tenel Ka's lightsaber gave a shriek of electrical
overload-and the blade winked out like a snuffed candle. Sparks and
smoke poured from the end of the handle where an energy blade should
have glowed.
Suddenly, encountering no resistance as Jacen LIGHTSABERS
^ thrust with his last reserves of strength, the emeraldgreen lightsaber
sliced through the opening where Tenel Ka's own blade had been just a
moment before-plunging down to the only thing that stood in its way.
Tenel Ka felt a line of blazing agony sweep across her arm just above
the elbow. It burned . . .
and yet below the bum she felt only a sickening, horrible coldness-a
bone-deep chill like none she had ever felt before.
Somehow her lightsaber thumped on the ground with a soft thud.
Impossibly, she saw her hand clenching the carved rancor's tooth. Sparks
the size of lightning bolts flashed around the handle as her weapon
exploded in a burst of blinding light.
Bright. So very bright . . .
Tenel Ka felt a dizzying haze swirling up to engulf her. Everything was
so confusing. Jacen screamed something she couldn't understand. Tenel Ka
hoped intensely that she had not hurt him.
Jaina, Lowbacca, and Master Skywalker all ran toward her, shouting, but
Tenel Ka couldn't find the energy to stay upright any longer. Just as
Jacen reached a hand out toward her, she felt herself falling to the
ground.
Then the pain and shock were completely swallowed up in blackness.
^
------------------ON THE FRINGES of the unmapped heart of the galaxy,
the Shadow Academy found a new hiding place near the flaming shells of
two stars that had been dying for the last five thousand years.
Without its cloaking device, the dark Imperial training center hung like
a circlet of thorns, washed in the blaze of solar radiation. The
whispering trails of thrown-off star gas would camouflage the station
from prying Rebel eyes.
Zekk stood before the broad windowports of the tallest observation
tower, staring into the dazzling maelstrom of starfire. The darkened
transparisteel of the viewport filtered out the deadly radiationbut even
dimmed to a fraction of its true power, the fury of the universe left
Zekk breathless.
Beside him stood Brakiss, Master of the Shadow Academy, a tall and
statue-handsome Jedi. As an Imperial spy, Brakiss had once studied at
the New Republic's Jedi academy; when Master Skywalker had tried to turn
him away from the dark side of the Force, however, Brakiss had fled back
to the Em 58 LIGHTSABERS
^ pire. There he gathered a group of Dark Jedi trainees and conditioned
them to serve the great leader of the Second Imperium, the resurrected
Emperor Palpatine himself.
Brakiss lifted his serene face, drinking in the view of the double suns.
"This reality makes the image in my office seem like a pale glimmer by
comparison, doesn't it, Zekk?"
Zekk nodded, but found himself without words.
"More than five millennia ago the Denarii Nova exploded, ripping through
these stars and reducing them to cinders," Brakiss said. "The powerful
Sith sorcerer Naga Sadow caused this cataclysmic event to gain his
freedom from pursuing Republic warships. With the extravagant power of
the dark side, Naga Sadow tore these two stars apart and used giant
flares like two slapping hands to crush the fleet behind him."
Zekk nodded again and finally found words.
"Another example of the power of the dark side."
Brakiss smiled proudly at him. "It is a power your friends Jacen and
Jaina would never have shown you-much less taught you."
"No," Zekk agreed. "They never would have."
For years, he had been friends with the twin children of Han Solo and
Leia Organa Solo. Zekk was just a street kid, though-a nobody, who lived
by his wits scavenging items in the dangerous underievels of the
city-covered world of Coruscant.
His hopes for a better life had been little more than dreams until the
Nightsister Tamith Kai snatched him and brought him to the Shadow
Academy as part of a new recruitment drive.
In an earlier attempt to gain talented candidates, Brakiss had made an
error by kidnapping the high-profile trainees Jacen, Jaina, and
Lowbacca.
When that failed, he had decided the Shadow Academy might do better with
a different sort of person: downtrodden young ones who wouldn't be
missed, yet had just as much potential to acquire Jedi powers-and more
to gain by swearing allegiance to the Second Imperium.
Zekk had resisted the transformation at first, fighting to stay loyal to
his friends. But gradually Brakiss lured him, showing Zekk how to use
the Force for one small thing, then another. Zekk discovered that he was
strong in the Force, and he learned quickly.
The experience altered his feelings toward the twins from friendship to
resentment. Jaina and Jacen had never thought to include him in Jedi
testing, though he felt he had as much innate talent as any of their
highbom friends. Zekk's main regret in leaving his old life was that he
missed his companion, old Peckhum. But now he had much more of a future.
Zekk was beginning to understand Jedi powers, and he had already done
things he'd never dreamed of.
LIGHTSABERS
^ Gazing at the stormy suns, Brakiss raised his arms to each side,
spreading his fingers. His silvery robe flowed around him as if knit
from silken spiderwebs. He stared into the swirling flares of the
Denarii Nova. "Observe, Zekk-and learn."
Closing his eyes, the Master of the Shadow Academy began to move his
hands. Zekk watched through the observation port, his green eyes
widening.
; The ocean of rarefied incandescent gases between the dying stars started
to swirl like arms of fire . . . writhing, changing shape, dancing in
time with the hand motions Brakiss made. The dark teacher was
manipulating the starfire itself!
He whispered to Zekk without opening his eyes, without observing the
effect of his work. "The Force is in all things," Brakiss said, "from
the smallest pebble to the largest star. This is just a glimmer of how
Naga Sadow reached out to the stars and delivered a mortal wound five
thousand years ago."
"Could you make the sun explode?" Zekk asked in awe.
Brakiss opened his eyes and looked at his young student. His smooth,
perfect forehead creased. "I don't know," he said. "And I don't believe
I ever want to try."
Zekk remembered the way Brakiss ha rst enticed him to experiment with
his innate Jedi powers, by giving him a flarestick and showing how
simple it was to draw shapes in the flames with the Force. Here in the
Denarii Nova, Brakiss had done the same thing-only on a scale the size
of a star system.
"Could I try it?" Zekk said eagerly, leaning forward. He touched his
fingertips to the lightfiltering viewport, looking out at the double
star and its brilliant corona, which rippled like a barely contained