Prologue
The darkness was all consuming. He could see nothing. He could feel nothing. It felt as if the last tendrils of life, so bright, so pure, had be bled from him.
Then there was a throbbing like distant thunder. It came again on steady rhythm, growing in intensity. The angry quaking sent a wave down his body with each throb.
Now the thunder was deafening, pounding his head, his heart, and his entire frame with a force that threatened to crush him.
With a suddenness that threatened to overwhelm him, Jek Va'Lynne's eyes flashed open. Suddenly he was keenly aware of his surroundings; painfully so. All around him was buffeting, deafening noise and furious, manic movement.
This was war.
He smelled ozone and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as blaster bolts flew, menacingly close, past his head, striking their targets to the ground behind him. He felt the concussion and the slight peppering of shrapnel, as an explosion threw the bodies of those unlucky enough to be nearby, whirling into the air. He heard the cries of the routed, retreating troops as they ran past him, fleeing the desperate battle, falling back to more defensive positions.
Then he heard a nearly forgotten sound, like the whining cry of some deranged, mechanical beast, as the all too familiar shapes materialized in the distance.
Tie fighters.
The infamous weapons of death made a low level run over the battlefield, veering slightly to bring a large troop carrier into their sites before turning it to smoking wreckage with their blasters. Jek felt a chill run down his back as they passed, loudly, over head.
Still, on he trudged over the marred and deformed terrain, two other Jedi and team of elite commandos, all of steal, followed resolutely in his wake. On they pushed, towards the massive rise ahead and their ultimate goal, the organic seeming, yet obviously un-natural temple at its apex. The temple seemed to have been pulled from the very terrain of the hill, raised by some wicked hand. An angry storm system swirled above it, spitting forth lightning in violent bursts. The clouds themselves originated from the tallest spire which spewed them forth like a chimney.
A deep throb went through his body and his eyes went dark and flashed open again for the duration of a heartbeat. He was now half-way to the temple, trudging ever on, when a whirlwind struck up behind him, lifting away the republic commandos, flailing and screaming, and flinging them through the air.
Another deep throb, like the beating of his heart, and his vision flashed dark and then clear once more. Now he was standing at the apex of the rise, approaching the menacing temple. Furious wind seemed to pour off of the edifice, and lighting struck at the sky from its many, claw-like spires.
One more heartbeat and Jek was now inside the evil temple, two Jedi, lightsabers pulsing energy in their hands, at his side. In front of them, his back to them, stood an ebony cloaked figure.
His cloak seemed impossibly dark, like a black hole. It seemed to be sucking up all light around it. The blackness of it was interrupted only by the occasional flash which coursed through it, like lightning through an indescribably angry thunderhead.
The chamber itself was pitch black at its recesses. In the center, however, a dull orange glow emanated from a deep pit, around which a ceremonial altar was built. From that pit arose billowing clouds of black smoke, which rose to the top of the chamber. As they rose, tongues of lighting licked around them, starting sparsely but increasing in intensity the further up the clouds billowed. At the apex of the chamber, the clouds began to swirl around a central point, from which they escaped the chamber, contributing to the storm swirling outside the temple.
The shrouded figure standing at the edge of the pit turned to face the Jedi. Over his face was a mask as black as the cloak over his body. Dark and without texture, it belied no expression. Suddenly, dark cloud-like tendrils snaked and swirled from the back of his head, swirling around the front of the mask for but an instant, before forming into an expression over the face. The hooded figure turned on them a menacing smile. Then a ripple went through the cloudlike tendrils forming the expression, and the smile was wiped away, replaced in an instant with an angry snarl as the figure began to charge, igniting a smoke-like lightsaber in mid stride. The lightsaber's grey color reflected the anger in the figure's face, and red bursts of energy pulsed through the lightsaber at intervals, like the lightning in the clouds above. As he approached the Jedi, he stretched forth his free hand and blue lightning like a spider's web burst from his fingertips.
Darkness again enveloped Jek, along with a deep throbbing, which became more and more intense, louder and more rapid, with each passing moment. Jek thought the noise might overwhelm him, crushing his consciousness into oblivion, when suddenly his eyes flashed open.
All was quiet.
He awoke in the cool, stony quarters, deep within the secure walls of the Jedi Praxeum, the academy which Luke Skywalker had established on Yavin IV, which Jek had been calling home for the last few weeks. He arose from his bed and dropped to the floor to do a set of push-ups, his normal routine after such a nightmare. It normally served to ground him in reality once again, the throbbing which it caused in his muscles reminding him that he was alive, reassuring him that he was awake. He did a few only to realize that he was already out of breath, his throat dry from exertion. The muscles in his arms also, already had begun to throb with fatigue. He rolled off of his arms, sat on the cold, stone floor and relished the sensation as the stone drew the heat from his body. He rubbed his hand across his sweat-beaded brow and suppressed a shudder as he forced from his mind the memories of the dream.
It had seemed so real….
Jek jumped to his feet, threw on some shoes and some shorts and set out for a run, a dull throbbing pressing on the back of his brain all the way.
Borrak Creyn was anxious. Jek Va'lynne, Borrak's master and the person closest to him, observed the tall, gawky youth with unkept black hair, as he paced just outside the entry of the shuttle. Jek, seated at the controls of the shuttle, could feel the apprehension flowing from his pupil and crashing into him in heavy waves. Borrak made no attempt to hide his feeling that he was not adequate for the mission ahead.
"Borrak," Jek called down the shuttle's entry ramp. Borrak didn't respond and instead continued to pace. "Borrak," Jek called again, a little louder this time over the wine of the shuttle's engines. Still Borrak failed to respond. "Hey, kid!" shouted Jek. Borrak started and looked around at his master, bewildered. "You with me?" asked Jek with as sympathetic an expression as he could muster. The youth nodded shakily and Jek smiled.
Just then, Oli Breen, the Jedi from Coruscant, strode into the hangar. She wore a cheerful smile as she strode towards the shuttle. Many passed Oli off as naive. She had a tendency towards being awkwardly straightforward and stating even the painfully obvious. But Jek knew different. His experience with Oli had taught him of her keen wit and decisive nature.
When Borrak noticed Oli's presence he stopped dead in his tracks. He was never good at hiding his feelings and now they were on grand display. His face had gone pallid and his mouth gaped open. He stood, stock still, as the raven-haired woman approached.
"Hi, I'm Oli Breen. Looks like we'll be fighting the Yuuzhan Vong together," Oli said as she came up to meet Borrak at the foot of the entry ramp to the shuttle. "What's your name?" she asked and extended a hand to the young apprentice.
Borrak, showcasing reflexes Jek had not previously seen, jumped back away from the woman's outstretched hand as if she had just pulled a vibroblade on him.
"What's wrong?" asked Oli innocently. "Do I have something on my hand?" She looked at her hand, wiped it off on her flight suit and offered it again, newly polished, to Borrak.
Borrak stood, stone cold and pale faced, staring at her.
"Blast! You'd think I was Darth Vader!" Said Oli and, smiling in greeting towards Jek, she strode past Borrak into the shuttle and took her seat behind the other Jedi Master.
Following a little ways behind Oli was her apprentice, Trask Gorand. Trask was everything that Borrak was not. He was confident, good-looking, very competent with a lightsaber for someone so young, and, Jek had decided, was if anything an even bigger pain in the butt than Borrak. He strode past Borrak with barely a notice and took his seat next to Oli.
"Let's get going kid," called Jek down the ramp to Borrak who took deep breath and made an effort to steady himself before boarding the shuttle.
Once Borrak was secure in the seat next to him, Jek closed the shuttle's entry way, got clearance to take off, and thumbed on the shuttle's repulsorlift drives. He directed the shuttle's nose towards the hangar's exit and throttled forward. Clearing the opening of the hangar, he nosed the shuttle up towards space and away from the lush jungles of Yavin IV, the site of the Jedi Academy. As they made orbit a squadron of E-Wing fighters moved into formation to escort the shuttle. As soon as they were clear of the gravity well of the great gas-giant Yavin, Jek engaged the hyperdrive and the stars stretched into lines before them and they were off at light-speed towards their destination.
The Jedi's mission seemed fairly straightforward on paper. It was to be one of simple infiltration. Republic forces had been at a stalemate with the Yuuzhan Vong on planet Nahmee for days now. Nahmee was of strategic significance, due to its situation along a critical hyperspace route to Coruscant, the capital of the Republic. For the Yuuzhan Vong it would make a great staging point for the push to the capital that now seemed inevitable. Nahmee was a jungle planet, more densely foliaged even than Yavin IV. The planet's dense foliage combined with the severe tropical storms which had been hammering the planet's only land-mass had made fighting the alien threat there nearly impossible.
The Republic maintained a base beneath the planet's surface. Because this base was impregnable to orbital onslaught the battle had gone to ground. The Yuuzhan Vong, however, found themselves just as frustrated with the fighting conditions on the planet as the republic forces. The Vong had taken up camp in some caves and decided to wait out the weather.
The Jedi's mission would be to infiltrate the Yuuzhan Vong camp stealthily, and aid Republic forces in driving the aliens off the planet once and for all.
Of course, Jek knew that such plans were rarely as simple in the execution as they appeared on paper. The Yuuzhan Vong were a terrible opponent. A race of warriors utilizing lethal biotechnology developed over generations of war and conquest, and currently engineered to fight and kill Jedi. The Yuuzhan Vong saw the Jedi as the greatest threat to their plans of bringing the galaxy into submission, and thus had made them their primary targets. This mission, Jek knew, would be one of untold danger.
Jek turned to his right to glance at his apprentice who stared ahead into hyperspace, the expression of his face matching the apprehension that was still flowing off of him in waves.
--
"I've got a bad feeling about this," said Borrak from the co-pilot's seat as the shuttle's proximity alert beeped to notify its occupants that they were about to come out of hyperspace.
"Yeah", said Jek simply in response as he disengaged the hyperspace drive and the kaleidoscope of light before them resolved itself into the tiny points of light that were the stars of that galaxy. Nahmee loomed in front of them, the giant, green land mass, surrounded by ocean, obscured by a massive, swirling storm system.
"Master?" asked Borrak. It took Jek a moment to realize that that the younger Jedi was addressing him. He felt annoyance surge through him at hearing that formal title, but instantly pushed the feeling away.
"What is it?" asked Jek.
"I've been thinking; I'm not sure I'm going to be able to use the stealth techniques you showed me. I've only had a week to practice them. You saw me on Yavin IV, even with all the trees and animals and noise and everything I was the first to get caught in the exercise. I'm just not cut out for stealth".
Though Jek wanted to feel frustrated with his pupil's lack of trust in the force, he chuckled slightly, as he couldn't help but agree. Borrak was tall, skinny and quite ungainly. Yes, Jek had to admit, Borrak was decidedly un-stealthy.
"I'm jeopardizing the whole operation. I can't go with you."
This, finally, did frustrate Jek. "Listen kid, what's jeopardizing this operation, if anything, is your negativity. Forget about it. What did Master Skywalker tell you when you left the Academy?"
"To trust in three things; my training, my master, and most of all, the force".
"That's right. Now, what have you done non-stop this past week?" It frustrated Jek to have to go through this routine before every mission. But the last thing he needed was a nervous greeny so wound up that the smell of his sweat alone would be sure to tip off the Yuuzhan Vong.
Borrak sighed and visibly caught hold of himself. Jek laughed inwardly. something about this idiotic routine always seemed to calm the greeny's nerves. "Training in stealth techniques," came the slightly calmer reply.
"Alright, who has been training you and is with you right now, going into this mission?"
"You, master."
Jek shrugged off the annoyance he felt at hearing that title again. "And what is a Jedi's most powerful ally?"
Borrak closed his eyes and smiled as he answered, "the force."
That routine, inane as it always was, had its desired effect, and Borrak was now calm and didn't voice another misgiving as their shuttle approached its destination.
Jek was slightly taken aback by his own reaction to hearing Borrak refer to him with the title "Master." It just sounded so out of place when he heard it addressed to himself. It wasn't as if he hadn't heard it before. Despite his insistence against it, Borrak had not stopped calling him by that title from day one. Nor was he new to the experience of being a Jedi Master.
Jek had already trained an apprentice. A brilliant, gallant, and carefree type whom the word "knight" definitely fit. Mere months after leaving his apprenticeship with Jek however, Lan Crom was sent on an assignment that would prove to be his last. He was escorting a convoy of refugees, fleeing a planet devastated by ruthless Yuuzhan Vong attacks, when they were ambushed by a swarm of Vong starfighters. As Jek had heard it, the battle was turning into a route and the Republic forces had the Yuuzhan Vong on the run. Then the Vong got desperate. Half a dozen coral skipper starfighters began to make suicide runs at largest of refugee ships, the one carrying the severely wounded and many of the refugee's supplies. Many were gunned down before getting close, but one got through and nearly collided with the helpless freighter. Jek's apprentice, who always seemed to have a knack for being in the opportune place at the right time, was able to veer his E-Wing fighter at the last moment and collide with the kamikaze coral skipper. He was killed, but saved dozens of innocent lives, and the badly needed supplies in the process.
He had never referred to Jek with the formal title "Master". They had been friends, more nearly like brothers. Jek was quiet and often cynical. He had always lacked patience and been quick to get down on himself. Lan's optimism and carefree personality provided a great balance. Jek had learned a lot from his apprentice. Lan's death had crushed Jek. For weeks he wondered if something he had taught Lan, or hadn't taught him, would have made the difference. But after a while, he came to grips with it.
He was thinking of his apprentice one day when he considered what the carefree youth would have told him in such a situation. He remembered the battle of Kuma'ari. Dozens of Yuuzhan Vong warriors remained on the planet, hassling the Jedi, while imminent death loomed from above in the form of Kuma'ari III's largest moon, which the Yuuzhan Vong were about to bring down on the planet in a tactic that they had executed before with devastating results. Side by side with Lan, knowing that the end was near, Jek looked at his young apprentice. On his face was not an expression of fear. Not one of certain defeat. Not even one of resolute determination to face a noble death. Lan's face was loose, almost half-smiling. He met his master's gaze and gave a carefree shrug and a wry grin, right before parrying a blow coming in from a charging Yuuzhan Vong. He thought of what expression Lan might have given him just before charging his E-Wing into the murderous Yuuzhan Vong's coral skipper. It was then that he had found peace with his apprentice's death and it was then that he accepted the responsibility of taking on a new apprentice.
He glanced again at Borrak and concern for the youth filled his being. So much to learn and discover. So much yet to overcome. Jek had come to know Borrak very well. He lacked self-esteem and didn't associate much with the other students his first few years at the Jedi Academy. Besides exclusion, he had been the focus of constant derision by others studying under Master Skywalker and the other Jedi Masters at the Academy. And of the deriders, Trask Gorand, Oli's apprentice, who now accompanied them on this mission, was foremost. Still full of concern for his apprentice, Jek turned his attention once again to bringing the shuttle in on its final approach.
"Alright, think you can handle it from here?" came the interrogative from over the shuttle's com system.
"Yeah, we've got it Grey-Leader," answered Jek. "Thanks for watching our tail."
"No problem. Give those blasted sithspawn what's coming to them."
"Will do." Said Jek and watched as the E-Wings veered away and then disappeared into hyperspace. "Alright, buckle up, we're heading down"
The planet's atmosphere was hellishly turbulent. Azure tongues of lightning flicked from the angry, spinning clouds and played across the shuttle's deflector shields. Despite the conditions, Jek was able to give the Jedi a fairly comfortable landing in a designated clearing. Upon disembarking into the torrent, the Jedi were met by a group of Republic commandos.
"How goes it?" shouted Jek above the gail as the commando leader approached.
"Well, you can see I think. The weather has kept us underground and the Vong in the caves. At least I've been able to make a killing in saabac games while we've been waiting"
Jek smiled. "What's their position?"
"Here, I'll download it to your nav-map."
After they zeroed in on the Yuuzhan Vong's location, the Jedi set out to meet their enemy.
--
It was nearly impossible to navigate through the thick jungle. With rain drops the size of turbolaser bolts falling fierce and wind that threatened to upend the four Jedi Knights as they made their way to the caves where they would confront the Yuuzhan Vong. It turns out that the Vong were situated about seven kilometers from where the Jedi set down. With conditions the way they were, it would be evening the next day at best before they arrived at the enemy camp.
On they trudged through the downpour. Jek Va'lynne, at the head of the troupe, grew impatient with the conditions. Obviously, there was nothing he could do, but that was what irked him the most. He hated being at the mercy of things over which he had no control. He hated to feel helpless.
Suddenly a cry came from behind him. He looked back to see two of the three other Jedi looking back at the empty space where Borrak Creyn, his apprentice, should have been. With a groan, made inaudible by the intense winds of the storm, he rushed back to see what had become of the young Jedi.
He found him a few steps later, on his back, leaves pasted to his chest by the wind and rain, and blood in a slow trickle running down from a would on his head, just above the scalp-line. He was concious, but barely.
"What happened?" asked Jek.
"I, I...dunno...I..." Borrak's eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled a bit in their sockets.
"Oli!" shouted Jek over his shoulder.
"I got it," called Oli Breen as she rushed to Jek's side and crouched to examine the apprentice. Trask stood behind them, arms folded, looking down his nose at the wounded Jedi with a look of half impatience, half bemusement on his face.
Oli was well known among the Jedi for her skill as a healer, which was exactly why she was chosen for this mission. She stretched out her hand and put it on Borrak's head, over the location of the wound. Borrak's eyes followed her hand weekly. As soon as Oli's hand touched his skin, his normally pinkish face lost all color, his eyes rolled up in their sockets and he went totally limp.
Oli glanced nervously from the young apprentice, to his master, to her apprentice and back to her patient. "That usually doesn't happen when I try to heal someone," she said apologetically.
Jek suppressed a chuckle.
Within ten minutes Borrak was conscious again and could speak of what had happened to him.
"I think it was a tree branch. Must have broken loose and been carried by the wind."
"Just think if you were that much shorter," said Oli, holding her fingers up to demonstrate.
Jek chuckled, Trask sneered, and Borrak went white, looking horrified that he had even opened his mouth.
"He's not gonna faint again is he?" asked Trask to no one in particular.
Jek, ignoring the slight by Trask, turned to his apprentice, "are you alright to walk?"
"Oh yes, he should definitely be able to walk," cut in Oli before Borrak had the chance to respond for himself.
Jek, without responding to Oli, looked back at his apprentice who gave a shaky nod.
"Alright, let's go."
"A Jedi, felled by an errant broken tree branch. We're here to take on a race of warriors, and he can't take a walk in the woods without nearly getting killed! Didn't you perceive the threat? Why didn't you just use a bit of basic telekinesis and push it away?"
Borraks face was positively flaccid. His chin was buried so far in his chest that Jek thought it might leave a mark.
He looked compassionately towards his apprentice who would barely raise his face to meet his master's gaze. Then Jek locked his gaze resolutely on Trask.
"Hey, Trask," he said.
Trask looked back and in that instant a number of things happened. Suddenly a root from one of the nearby trees snaked up to catch Trask around the right ankle. As he stumbled, a nearby pile of wet leaves, driven by the wind into a recess between the root of a tree and a boulder, suddenly took flight and hit the falling Trask square in the face. Then, just before hitting the rough, wet ground, Trask stopped as if suspended on a cushion of air.
Amid gleeful chuckles from Oli, to whom the hilarity of the situation seemed to out-weight the seriousness of this obvious misuse of force power by Jek, and the astonished, gape-mouthed expression on an ever more pail Borrak, Jek strode up to the levitating Trask and kneeled down to look him in the face.
"Watch your step," said Jek.
--
As the Jedi continued to march, the torrent began to die down. This presented a new set of problems however. The fact was that the Yuuzhan Vong seemed to have an inexplicable disconnect from the force. This meant that Jedi were unable to influence or perceive the presence of the Yuuzhan Vong. Undoubtedly the Vong had set up sentries to watch for the arrival of unwelcome guests. The problem was that the Jedi would be unable to detect the presence of the Yuuzhan Vong forward scouts.
Until now the Jedi had gone undetected because of the noise and the rain of the storm. They had been able to move without regard for the noise they would make. Now they would have to use extra caution so as not to tip off the enemy sentries, wherever they were.
Jek Va'lynne relayed his thoughts on the situation to the trio of Jedi traveling with him.
"We'll have to use stealth from here on out," Jek told the other Jedi. "We have no way of knowing where the Yuuzhan Vong have set up guard. We'll just have to move silently and hope we don't walk right into them."
The other Jedi agreed. Jek began to concentrate. Within a moment, all of the sounds naturally made by a normal human being were squelched. Breath, footsteps, even the sound of his flight suit crinkling slightly with movement, were made imperceptible. More startling was the fact that, unless viewed directly, Jek was practically invisible. He began to advance, now much more slowly than before, as the other Jedi prepared themselves to execute the technique.
Borrak Creyn, Jek's apprentice, began to concentrate as well. He reassured himself by thinking of all the hours he spent practicing this technique, and trying to force from his mind the memory of all of his failures with it. After a few minutes' meditation he successfully managed the stealth technique. A rush of optimism flowed through him, but was immediately tempered when he opened his eyes.
Jek had advanced a good distance ahead, as had Oli Breen. Trask Gorand, Oli's apprentice, had taken nearly as long as Borrak to silence himself, and was now moving recklessly to catch up to the two masters.
He leapt, albeit silently, from root to root, rock to rock, trunk to trunk. As he overtook Jek, the older Jedi fixed him with an anxious stare. Jek dared not speak, for fear such would defeat the purpose of the stealth technique and might tip off the enemy to the Jedi's approach. Instead he watched helplessly, hoping against the inevitable.
Trask was now a good fifty meters ahead of the other Jedi. With every leap his confidence grew, as did his recklessness. Spotting, as he sprinted, a sizable gap between two felled trees, Trask set himself for the difficult jump;
and lost his footing.
He tumbled, flailing, into the gap. After a fall of nearly two meters, he landed with a loud grunt and a heavy thud on the cold, wet ground.
The other Jedi froze and immediately began searching their surroundings for signs of movement, hoping that Trask's blunder had gone unnoticed. When no sign of the enemy was detected, they hurried silently to the gap into which Trask had fallen. Trask was getting slowly to his feet, trying to rid himself of the mud which now soiled the left half of his flight suit. As he looked up to discover the presence of the other Jedi a look of mixed horror and humiliation crossed his face, but was quickly replaced with a sneer as he turned his back to the other Jedi and began to climb out of the gap.