Star Wars.

The Last of the Jedi.

Underworld.

by Jude Watson.

CHAPTER ONE.

Glimpsed through a curtain of cold gray rain, the ruined Jedi Temple looked more like a trick of the eye than a once-magnificent structure. To Ferus Olin, the Temple appeared to be a ghost image, like an afterburn on a vidscreen. He blinked. He felt as though the entire structure was dissolving before his eyes.

Since the end of the Clone Wars, so much in his life had seemed not real and hyper-real at the same time. He knew it wasn't logical, but it made sense to him. One moment he had been leading a peaceful life on a pleasant world, and the next he was a resistance fighter, then a prisoner, then a fugitive. And with each new twist and turn, he found himself wondering: How did this happen?

Get a grip, Ferus, he told himself now. He was here, and he had a job to do. The Temple was all too real, occupied by Imperial stormtroopers.

He'd absorbed the shock of the Empire occupying the Temple. Except that seeing it was like being punched in the gut. The Temple looked somehow terrible to him, like a being that had received a mortal wound.

He had once been a Jedi apprentice. He had left the Jedi, but step-by-step he was managing to reclaim what he'd lost - the same pure connection to the Force, the same allegiance to his fellow Jedi - or, now, the memory of them. Seeing the Temple like this hurt the deepest part of him.

"Ferus? Don't know whether you've noticed? But it's raining."

Ferus turned to his companion, Trever Flume. The thirteen-year-old's teeth were chattering. The hood he'd pulled over his bluish hair hadn't done much to keep him dry. A drop of rain rolled off the tip of his hood and hit his nose.

"Rain" was putting it mildly. Now Ferus felt his sodden cloak, his clammy skin. Part of his Jedi training had been to learn how to be impervious to physical discomfort. Feel the rain, feel the cold, then let it go. But he hadn't been a Jedi in a long time, and he had to admit he was freezing.

"Not that I'm complaining," Trever said through clenched teeth. "But I can't feel my fingers. Or my feet. And I'm hungry. There are icicles on my hair. And I'm - "

"Right. I get the point," Ferus said. "Just a few more minutes."

"Fine. If my toes fall off, just alert me, okay? Stick 'em in my pocket or something."

Ferus shook his head. He couldn't seem to lose Trever. The boy had stowed away on Ferus's escape ship from Bella.s.sa, and it had taken Ferus a few weeks to realize that Trever wasn't going away. He was a smart, resourceful kid, but Ferus still wasn't crazy about taking him along. Ferus had given him the option to leave, but Trever hadn't taken it. Ferus didn't quite know what to do with him, and until he figured it out, he and Trever were stuck together. Trever had street skills and a kind of stubbornness that could morph into courage. There were times when Ferus was actually glad to have him along.

Ferus peered through the electrobinoculars again. The Temple was definitely being used. It had taken him only a few hours in Coruscant to pick up the gossip on the street. The Empire was using the Temple as a prison for captured Jedi. There were whispers that some had survived, that some had returned to the Temple before the homing beacon was dismantled. There they had found stormtroopers and an Imperial prison where their home had been.

That was the rumor, anyway.

Ferus didn't know how much of it was true.

Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi had told him that he'd managed to transform the horning beacon into a warning beacon before any Jedi had returned. That didn't match the Empire's story. So part of the rumor was a lie. Even if some Jedi had returned, there couldn't be many of them. Ferus knew that almost all had been killed in the purge.

But even if there was only one, he had to get in and see.

He already suspected who was inside: Fy-Tor-Ana, the Jedi known for her grace with a lightsaber. Ferus had rescued the great Jedi Master Garen Muln in the caves of Ilum, and Garen had told him how Fy-Tor had left him and promised to return. She'd been heading for the Temple and had never come back.

She had to be here. If she'd been free, she would have returned to Garen. Ferus could only conclude that she was either imprisoned or dead.

Garen himself was recovering on a hidden asteroid that Ferus hoped to set up as a new Jedi base. He didn't know how many Jedi might be alive, but they would need a safe place to live.

He noted the comings and goings of Imperial ships. Since the old hangar had been destroyed, they'd built a new landing platform off the once-grand front plaza. It protruded like an ugly scar.

Don't think of what was. Think of the next step.

So, it was a prison. He knew prisons.

It was difficult to break out. But not as difficult to break in.

"I know what you're thinking," Trever said as he stamped his boots to warm his feet. "You're thinking we can do it."

"Well, we can."

"Yeah. Sure. No problem. What's a couple hundred stormtroopers?"

Ferus kept his gaze on the Temple. "I have an advantage."

"Besides me?" Trever smirked.

"They might occupy the Temple, but they don't know the Temple. No one knows it like a Jedi. I can get us in - and get us out."

"So you say."

Ferus gave him a level look. "Listen, I can do this alone. I'd rather do it alone. We can have a rendezvous point - "

"No." Trever's voice was fiat. "I'm with you."

They'd already had the argument. Trever saw the shift in Ferus's gaze that meant he'd accepted the inevitable. "So how do you figure we'll get in'?" the boy asked.

"I think I have a way," Ferus said. "We drop from a ship straight onto the burned tower. I can see a place where part of the tower was blasted away. That will give us some footing. Directly above there used to be a small, gla.s.sed-in garden on the south side. It was used to grow herbs for the kitchen. If we can climb over that blasted part into where the garden used to be, we can get into a service hallway. There was a system of linkage service tunnels that ran to the service turbolifts. With any luck some of the tunnels have survived, and we can get into the lower levels that way. That's the only place the prison could be."

"What ship are you talking about?" Trever asked. "We left Toma's star cruiser at that landing platform. Besides, if we're both going in, who's going to drive?"

"We're not going to use Toma's cruiser." Toma was a new ally. He'd just fought a battle against Imperial forces on his home planet of Acherin. He and his first officer, Raina, had joined forces with Ferus and Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan had returned to his mysterious exile, but Raina and Toma had remained on the asteroid to watch Garen. "I've got a different idea. We'll hire an air taxi."

"You mean, jump in an air taxi and say, 'Hey, driver, could you please drop us on the tower?"'

"Well, it has to be the right driver."

"Okay, let's review," Trever said. "We're going to drop from a moving vehicle onto a ruined tower to find a maybe-opening that could lead to some blasted-to-bits tunnels, in order to maybe-make it into a place flooded with stormtroopers so we can maybe-rescue one Jedi who, if we're lucky, might still be alive."

Ferus looked Trever right in the eye. "You have a problem with that?"

"Nah," Trever said. "Let's go."

Many things had changed in Coruscant, but some things remained the same. On one of the lower levels of Galactic City there was still a shadowy landing platform where private air taxi drivers could be hired to do illegal and dangerous trips, no questions asked. While Ferus negotiated with a squat, muscular humanoid with tattooed facial markings, Trever found a food stand that looked like it might not poison him. He quickly devoured a veg turnover and downed a carton of juice. When Ferus beckoned, he stuffed another turnover in his pocket and was ready to go.

They climbed into the back of a battered air taxi and zoomed through the colorful laserlights of the entertainment district. The driver kept to the prescribed s.p.a.ce lanes - for now. As he snaked his way up through the levels to the Senate district, they could see the ruined Temple better and better.

Here the s.p.a.ce lanes were crowded with traffic. The driver slid smoothly into the flow. He kept the engines powered down, but at the last moment he veered off into a lane closer to the Temple. He dived down and around the damaged tower and hung in the air.

"Go if you're going," he grunted. "In a moment I'll be on Imperial sensors."

Ferus activated a liquid cable line and turned to Trever. He saw the boy pale.

"It will hold you," Ferus rea.s.sured him. "And I'll be right next to you."

Trever swallowed, then nodded. Ferus hooked the second line to his belt.

Ferus released both liquid cables himself, aiming for a spot above a jagged edge of the tower that looked like it would hold them. The line caught and jerked them forward roughly as the driver accelerated. Ferus cursed the driver in his head for the premature boost as they flew wildly through the air, the wind whistling against their ears. Rain pelted their faces like sharp needles. Ferus landed hard on the protruding edge and grabbed for Trever to guide his landing. Trever smacked against the tower and hugged it.

"That was fun," he croaked.

"Just don't look down."

"I'll try not to."

The air taxi zoomed off, merging seamlessly back into the flow of heavy traffic. The whole operation had taken seconds.

Ferus wiped the rain out of his eyes. From his position on the tower, a good deal of Galactic City was spread out below him. He could see the sprawl of the Senate complex and the new, ma.s.sive statue of Emperor Palpatine that Palpatine himself had commissioned. From here, Ferus and Trever were invisible to the Imperial traffic heading to the new landing platform, but he couldn't rely on it for long.

Ferus felt the rough stone of the Temple against his back. Sure, he would have to break in, but a surge of feeling rose in him, a connection like no other.

He was home.

CHAPTER TWO.

A flexible durasteel arm of a sensor was still sticking out of the wall. Ferus tested his weight on it, and it held. Using it as leverage, he was able to hook his fingers over the edge above and boost himself up for a quick look at the site of the old garden.

With a grunt, Ferus balanced on his palms. The garden hadn't just succ.u.mbed to the fire, he saw - it had been blasted. Chunks of blackened stone blocked the former entrance. The gla.s.s had shattered and needles of it were still lying about.

He remembered....

Standing next to Siri, as she crushed an herb and held it under his nose. "What does it say to you?"

"It's an herb," he said.

"But what does it say?"

"I don't understand, Master." What did she want? Ferus was only thirteen, just beginning his apprenticeship. He was afraid all the time of doing or saying the wrong thing.

"This is part of the Force, too, Ferus. Connection to living things. Close your eyes. Smell. Good. Now. What does it say?"

"It says... lunch."

Siri barked her short laugh. "Not very imaginative, but I guess it will have to do. Let's try another...."

"Master? Yoland Fee doesn't like anyone to pick his herbs. It's a rule for the Padawans."

Siri turned to him, her hands full of edible flowers and green herbs. She smiled.

"You know, Ferus, if you could manage to get some of that starch out of your tunic, we'd get along much better."

Ferus felt the strain shoot through his arms from holding himself up. He dropped back to his perch. He hadn't fully realized that entering the Temple put him at risk from more than Imperial troops. He'd take stormtroopers over memories any day.

Siri had been right, of course. Thinking back to that moment, he remembered how careful he'd been to keep his spine straight, his gaze level. He had been conscious of his every word, tailoring it to what the perfect apprentice should say or do.

Every time Ferus looked back to a memory of himself as a Padawan, he wondered how anyone could stand him. It was only later, on Bella.s.sa, through his friendship with Roan Lands, that he had learned to unbend from the rigid contours he had set for himself, to see that perfection was a prison he had built that kept him apart from others.

He missed his old life with Roan as much as he missed the Jedi. War and the Empire had torn his life in two, as it had for so many in the galaxy. At first he hadn't recognized the change. Palpatine's grab for power had been so slow, so careful. So fiendishly smart. He had known that in times of turmoil beings looked for leadership - and didn't examine too closely what that leadership was up to. When the reality behind the mask emerged, it was too late.

"The stones have collapsed around the opening," he told Trever. "We'll have to blast one. Think you can manage it?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

He had discovered that Trever was something of an explosives expert. Trever could calmly take apart an alpha charge and amp it or weaken its power without batting an eye. His brother Tike had been part of the resistance movement on Bella.s.sa and had taught him. Tike had died, along with Trever's father, at the hands of the Empire. After that, Trever had made his living on the streets of Bella.s.sa, and had picked up plenty of knowledge on the way. He was a product of war and suffering, old before his time, hiding the vulnerabilities of a boy that still crouched underneath his bravado.

"We'll need a half charge, just enough to blow a small hole," Ferus told Trever. "We don't want to attract any attention."

Trever fished an alpha charge out of his utility belt. "This should do it. Boost me up."

Ferus gave him a boost. He held onto the boy's feet as Trever wriggled, positioning the charge between the ma.s.sive stones.

"Let's take cover," Ferus said, easing Trever back down.

"It's only a half charge."

The blast almost blew Ferus off the ledge. He grabbed at the protruding sensor and swung in midair, caught by a buffeting wind. It grabbed at his body and twirled it like a reed. He decided to take his own advice to Trever and not look down.

He swung his legs back onto his old perch. Trever had squeezed himself into the carved-out opening.

"That was a half charge?" Ferus asked, incredulous.

"It's not an exact science, you know," Trever replied sheepishly.

"Let's just hope the stormtroopers didn't hear it. Come on."

Ferus boosted himself up once more to inspect Trever's handiwork. Despite the power of the blast, the hole was small, a testament to the strength of the stone. It was just big enough to squeeze through.