Streen crouched down and plucked from the Temple's roof a small stone that scintillated brilliantly in the dawning sun. "Corusca gem. The only place in the universe they are formed is in Yavin's heart. It could have been lodged in the hatch a.s.sembly and fallen off when Kyp entered the Sun Crusher." I groaned. "Not the news I wanted to hear."

Cilghal raised a hand. "Corusca gems can be found here on Yavin, and we have no way of knowing how long that piece of one has been here. More importantly, we have no way of knowing if the Sun Crusher is still in the gas giant or not. Again, you're reaching conclusions on the most circ.u.mstantial of evidence."

"I can see why you were a diplomat, Amba.s.sador." I sighed heavily. "Okay, look, we have to take this in steps. First thing, we get Master Skywalker down and out of the elements."

Tionne smiled. "We should place him in the Grand Audience Chamber."

I winced. "Won't that be like having him lie in state? He isn't dead."

Her smile contracted. "I was just thinking that he liked the chamber and the acoustics are good for singing and it was the site of a great victory celebration."

Karo came around behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. "Good thinking, Tionne. There's room enough there that we can all gather around and listen to you singing. We want him to feel he's still part of our community." Kam looked past her at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Right, exactly. You're thinking a lot more quickly today than I am, Tionne." I glanced at the Mort Calamari. "Amba.s.sador, you've got a talent for healing. Will you monitor Master Skywalker and let us know what we need to help him? Our medical supplies are limited here .... "

"I can see to his initial care, yes. We should certainly get a full medical team out here as fast as possible, however." Cilghal slowly blinked her eyes. "We must also notify the New Republic and Councilor Organa Solo that something has happened to hcr brother."

Brakiss added, "And let them know Kyp Durron has the Sun Crusher. With his hatred for remnants of the Empire, there is no telling what he will do with a weapon of that power."

I cut off Cilghal's protest of Brakiss' remarks. "At the very least we need to get a survey team out here that can check to see if the Sun Crusher is still in the gas giant or not."

Kirana Ti crouched and mopped sweat from Luke's brow with the hem of her Jedi robe. "We should also make certain Master Skywalker is never alone.

He should always have an honor guard with him."

Dorsk 81 looked at her with horror on his face. "You think Mastcr Skywalker is still in jeopardy?"

I cleared my throat. "We can't discount that possibility. Kyp may have wanted him dead and held back at the last moment, for reasons we can't begin to plot. He might return to finish the job." Or the dark man might try. "Having someone with Master Skywalker also makes sense on the medical front, in case there is a change."

The Mon Calamari nodded. "We should get him inside now.

He is stable enough to move, I believe."

"Good. I'll get on the HoloNet and speak to Coruscant to start notification going. Amba.s.sador, I'd like you to later speak with Councilor Organa Solo. You can answer her questions about her brother better than I can, and news of what has happened here should come from someone who knows her, not from a stranger."

Brakiss peered imperiously at me. "What about the rest of us?"

"I don't know. Do what you're able to do. Help Cilghal.

Make food. Meditate."

The slender man frowned. "Meditate? Hardly helpful in this situation, wouldn't you say?"

Karo shook his head vehemently. "We need to avoid panic and keep our wits about us. We should practice what we have learned so far, strengthening ourselves. If Kyp returns, if another problem arises, we need to be able to deal with it." His head came up. "I'll expect everyone who isn't a.s.signed other duties to meet for exercises as usual."

"It's a plan." I gave Karo a nod. "And a good one. Everyone clear? Good.

Go to it."

I descended to the comnmnications center and powered up the system.

Luke's R2 unit stood faithfully by to help me, but his anxiety kept him bouncing from tread to tread. His whistles took on a pinched tone, reminding me of Whistler when he really wanted to have his gears lubed.

"Go, Artoo, having you near him will make Master Skywalker feel a lot better, I'm certain. And you can monitor lifesigns better than any of the rest of us." I smiled as the droid raced from the comm center. I wasn't certain I wanted him around while I worked anyway.

I tried first to reach Wedge, but could only leave a message in his personal holocache. Next I tried Tycho and managed to get him at Squadron Headquarters.

He gave me a big smile. "Didn't expect to be hearing from you for a while. How is the training going?"

I shook my head and his smile atrophied. "We just took a big hit. Luke Skywalker is down."

"Down?"

"Hurt, but we don't know how badly. We can only guess what happened and it's not good. Luke's stable right now, and we hope he'll recover, but we're going to need a full medical team out here as fast as possible."

Tycho glanced out of the holograph's frame, then nodded. 'Tve got a shuttle fueling and prefiighting right now. I'll alert a reed team and fly it out myself."

"Good. I also have a list of other things I want you to bring."

"Whatever you need."

"Could be tough to get." I paused for a moment. "I need enough nergon 14 charges to level something like the Great Temple here."

Tycho sat back and blinked away some surprise. "Are things that drastic'?"

"Could be. I hope what I think might be happening isn't actually going on here, but if it is, I might need to take down a temple to act as a circuit breaker." I lowered my voice. "I need the crates mislabeled, too.

I don't know that I can trust every-OllC here .... "

"So you can't really trust anyone but yourself."

"That's pretty much it."

Tycho looked at me, then slowly nodded. "I trust you know what you're doing."

"I think so." I ran my hands back through my hair. "Last thing, I need you to put me through to General Cracken. It is vital I speak to him."

"Okay, I'll do that now." Tycho gave me a quick grin. "See you in the better part of thirty hours."

"Thanks, Colonel."

The Rogue Squadron crest hung in air above the corem unit's holoprojection pad. It brought an unconscious smile to my face. I remembered when Gavin Darklighter had designed it, surrounding the Rebel crest with twelve X-wings streaking outward. For almost five years that insignia had helped define who I was. Now it helped remind me of where I came from, and another proud tradition that I was weaving into my new life.

Cracken's face replaced it. "Colonel Celchu suggested you had something urgent for me."

I nodded. "You remember that Sun Crusher you thought you'd taken care of by dumping it in Yavin gas giant'?"

"I don't like the sound of that question, Captain."

"Then you're really going to hate the reason I'm asking it." I set my face into an impa.s.sive mask. "Some time past midnight local time, person or persons unknown arrived on Yavin 4. They confronted Master Skywalker, defeated him, and departed again. They left behind a Z-95 Headhunter with the controls destroyed. Kyp Durron, one of the few, if only, people who knows how to pilot that Sun Crusher was last seen in possession of the Headhunter in question. I don't have tissue samples and fingerprints to prove he was in it when it arrived here yet, but, trust me, he was." I felt a little twinge of guilt at violating Cilghal's caution, but softsoaping facts wasn't going to help New Republic Intelligence deal with the situation.

Cracken's face sagged and his mouth slowly opened. "You have no idea where he went, who he was with?"

"None you'd believe." I let a grim note play through my voice. "Given things Kyp said before he left earlier, his ire seems directed at the Empire. If I had to guess, I'd say he'd be hunting whoever the latest self-styled warlord is, or maybe going after the remnants of Thrawn's fleet. When he finds a target, you'll know."

"An eighteen-year-old kid who grew up in a prison mine in control of a weapon that can destroy star systems." Cracken scratched at a spot on his forehead. "At least when we were dealing with Imperials we had a chance of predicting their behavior, but a kid who's angry with the galaxy?"

"Not one of the better days for the New Republic, I agree."

"You said Luke Skywalker was defeated. What's his status?"

"He's hurt and in a coma. No telling when or if he will come out of it."

Cracken nodded wearily. "So we're on our own for this one."

"Right. Amba.s.sador Cilghal will be communicating with Councilor Organa Solo when we have more information on Master Skywalker's status. Colonel Celchu is going to run a medical team and some supplies out here inside a day from now." I shrugged. 'Tll keep you informed as I am able."

"Thank you."

I hesitated for a second, then looked at him. "Might seem kind of trivial given what I've just told you,but any word about Mirax?"

"Not trivial at all, Captain. I admire your restraint in asking." The general gave me an open stare. "No word, no leads that are panning out.

No ransom demands. We're still looking and have hope."

"I'm sure you are, and I share your hope. Thank you, sir." I tossed him a quick salute. "Yavin 4 out."

Fustration largely characterized the week between Master Skywalker's fall and the arrival of his sister and her family. When Amba.s.sador Cilghal had told her what had happened, Leia Organa Solo had wanted to travel to Yavin 4 immediately, but the demands of her office were not such that they could be so easily dismissed. Amba.s.sador Cilghal suggested she could wait until the medical team had arrived and made its evaluation, and promised to keep her informed of any changes.

This direct link with Luke's sister made Amba.s.sador Cilghal, our newest student, the de facto leader of the academy, at least from the New Republic's point of view. Kam Solusar still oversaw our instruction, but he didn't push to expand what we knew, just perfect it. I understood his reluctance to teach us more in Luke's absence, but this meant Kam was inclined to be conservative in what he allowed to go on at the academy.

He kept us all close to the Great Temple and even asked me to curtail my runs. I flat refused to do that, but found myself a circuit that always kept me relatively close to home.

Frustration set in, because with Cilghal and Kam in charge I rcally had no standing where I wantcd it. When the survey tcam came to see if the Sun Crusher was still in the heart of Yavin, they roundly ignored me.

Some shave-tailed lieutenant told me that all information was on a need-to-know basis, and he'd decide when or if I needed to know. Had he any idea who I really was, he'd have been answering "Yes, sir," and "No, sir"

and not daring to breathe unless I gave him leave to do so, but as a Jedi wannabe, I was just seen as "part of the problem."

Of course, it would have been child's-play to meddle with his mind and make him think I was not present in the comm center when he filed his report with General Cracken, but I was fairly certain such a capricious use of my abilities would have left me dabbling in the dark side. While I did want to know what he had to report, I didn't want to put myself in harm's way learning it. Still, I did consider myself as having a need to know, so I convinced Luke's R2 unit to pull the report from the comm center computer.

I could have saved myself and Artoo the trouble if I remembered the first lesson about junior officers: if they know something neat, they can't wait to share it. If they know nothing, they use ranks and regs to cover their ignorance. This Lieutenant Morrs was about as ignorant as a Hutt is ugly. Because of storms raging in the gas giant's heart, he couldn't be certain if the Sun Crusher was there, had been destroyed or had been taken away. His survey results were labeled inconclusive and seemed to have put the New Republic somewhat at ease concerning the Sun Crusher.

While I would have liked to have taken heart in the idea that the Sun Crusher might not have gone anywhere, another development, or lack of one actually, had me worried. Since Luke's defeat, there had been no sign of the dark man. This scared me a great deal because his lack of activity was somewhat uncharacteristic and made me think we were just on the cusp of the disaster Master Skywalker had foreseen.

I still thought of the dark man as a sociopath, and nothing I'd learned about Exar Kun suggested he didn't fit that mold perfectly. Sociopathic murderers tend to cycle-they commit their crimes on a schedule that makes sense for them. As their crimes become more and more horrific, the cycle tends to speed up until whatever little control they had over themselves erodes and they get sloppy enough to get captured. The havoc they wreak in that time is nothing short of devastating and brutally cruel.

Gantoris was on Yavin just over two weeks before his death, which could be seen as a cap to one cycle. Kyp arrived a week or so later and was here just over a week before he stole the Headhunter. Inside a week he came back and dropped Luke like a hot rock. By rights the dark man should have been back preying on us within days after Luke's defeat, but he wasn't, and this frightened me.

There were ample explanations for why he wasn't causing us trouble. The first is that he wanted to give us time to despair over Luke's condition.

That would leave us more vulnerable to him. The second reason, and one that chilled me to the marrow. was that he was devoting his energies to controlling Kyp Durron and the Sun Crusher. If it was Exar Kun who had influenced Kyp, I didn't know what target he'd pick for the Sun Crusher, but I'd hate to be on a world he decided to pay back after four thousand years.

The only vaguely positive explanation for Exar Kun's dormancy that I could come up with was that his effort to draw the Sun Crusher from Yavin and to down Luke had tired him out. I had no way to determine how powerful Exar Kun could be, but it struck me as possible that he'd expended a lot of energy to defeat a Jedi Master. There was no telling how long it would take for him to recover, but with each pa.s.sing day the apprentices grew in strength as well.

In blackest night, any light is welcome.

Tycho brought the medical team and my special supplies as quickly as possible. He told me the shuttle he had brought had a fully operational proton torpedo launching system and offered to take me on a strafing run of any Temple I wanted to destroy, but I held back. Proton torpedoes probably would have been the most effective way to deal with Exar Kun's stronghold, but I still recalled how adamant Luke had been that neither I nor any of the other students travel there. If we weren't strong enough to deal with the problem, I didn't want to put Tycho in jeopardy.

"I'll leave you the coordinates, Colonel." I tossed him a salute as he boarded the shuttle to leave. "If things go very badly, talk Admiral Ackbar into a planetary bombardment that will raze it."

"I copy." He returned my salute. "May the Force be with you."

The medical team he'd brought went over Luke from top to bottom, inside and out. His systems seemed to be functioning just fine, but there was no one in residence inside him. The doctors and med-techs and droids all listened to us try to explain that fact to them, but they were creatures of science. While they could watch us do simple things with the Force, they sought physical and scientific explanations for what were spiritual phenomena. Trying to explain the Force to them was like trying to explain altruism to a rancor.

Their departure left us with nothing to do but wait for Leia Organa Solo's arrival. It could have come at any time, so we spent the better part of a week waiting. I've probably spent longer weeks on boring stake-outs, but nanoseconds seemed to pa.s.s in hours-and long hours at that.

And, despite Kam's best efforts to keep us focused, our spirits began to ebb.

Princess Leia's arrival worked wonders for us. She looked tired and a bit haggard, but still every bit the exciting and heroic icon she had been during the Rebellion. Her twins, dark-haired and bright eyed, looked around at Yavin 4 with a mixture of wonder and trepidation. Last down the egress ramp from the Millennium Falcon came Han Solo. He looked to me as if he'd lost a bit of weight during his recent adventure on Kessel, but still cut a dashing and vital figure.

Amba.s.sador Cilghal led the Solos to the Grand Audience Chamber. Sunlight filled the room with a golden glow and warmth that belied the cold and stark reality of Luke lying on a bier as if dead. The sight seemed to stagger his sister for a moment. I hung back enough that I could not hear the family's whispered remarks, but Jaina squirmed down out of her father's arms and gave her uncle a kiss. All of us hoped that gesture might work where our powers and medical science had failed, and my heart ached when the disappointed child turned away, defeated.

The enthusiasm sp.a.w.ned 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 b.u.t.ter-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-indulgent and, in the long run, rather trivial. Providing food was what he could do to help the situation that was beyond helping-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 catalogued 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 we 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 swallowed 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 Alderaan's destruction, his master, Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi, 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 ident.i.ty 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 ultimate in morphability when a fundamental truth in these lives proved wrong. For these people there never had been a question 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 const.i.tuent 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 system?"

I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my tunic. "Unless you know of another superweapon sitting around that could explode a star."