Chapter Fourteen: The Golden Lightsaber
"Kyle, wake up!"
Kyle Katarn, mercenary and former storm trooper in his Imperial Majesty's army, continued to snore loudly. With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, Jan Ors removed her cap and hit her partner in the chest. Kyle sat up and rubbed his face. "What'd'ya do that for?"
"Wake up and look at this!" Jan said. "I came out of hyperspace to check the com chatter on the black channels, and saw this."
Kyle leaned forward, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and read. "One million credits for the Tantive IV?" He leaned back. "That name sounds familiar."
"It's Princess Leia's personal ship, you laser brain," Jan said without heat. "Remember our last communication? She was at Hoth when the Empire attacked. The Tantive IV made it out."
"We'd better tell someone, then," Kyle said.
Jan smiled sarcastically. "You think? Good thing you're not the brains of this operation."
"Yeah, well, you haven't done so well yourself, since I have to keep saving you."
"Just keeping you on your toes."
Jan sent a signal with their hypercom frequency toward the nearest known rebel beacon. It took less than half an hour for the signal to come in from Rebel Command. They were surprised by who answered, as well. Ordinarily their orders came either through Crix Madine or one of his subordinates. But in this case the face that appeared on their holocom was none other than Princess Leia herself.
"Kyle, Jan, thank the Force you contacted us," she started off immediately. "We've been looking for you."
"Funny about that," Kyle said. "We were looking for you. Did you know there's a bounty out on your ship worth a million imperial credits?"
The princess blinked and paled. "A million credits? You could buy two Tantive IVs for that much."
"Yeah, you must be real popular," Kyle said.
Jan hit him with her cap again. "Princess, you said you were looking for us?"
"Yes. Is there some place we can meet?"
"How 'bout Tatooine?" Kyle said. "That's about as remote as you can get, and we won't have to worry about anyone bothering us there because there's no one there left alive."
"Fine. We'll be there in about five hours."
"We'll be there," Jan said.
The channel clicked off. Jan turned to Kyle and stared at him for the longest time. "What did you do now?" she finally demanded.
~~Empire~~
~~Empire~~
Almost seventeen years ago, Darth Vader walked upon the sands of Tatooine and found a grave for a four-year-old boy who had died in a speeder accident.
Less than an hour after reading the name inscribed on the marker for that grave, upon Darth Vader's personal orders, the Star Destroyer in orbit executed a Base Delta Zero on the planet. Part of Tarkin Doctrine, the BDZ was the literal glassing of an entire planet's surface. Although Tatooine never supported a large population, every sentient being that had the misfortune to walk its dunes that day died.
Seventeen years later, much of the black glass of the surface had worn down under the torrential winds that swept across the broken planet's surface. Where the slag broke, the wind picked up sand, until the sandstorms stretched so long they could be seen from space sweeping across the dead surface.
Largely because of the wind, the two ships agreed to land in a relatively sheltered depression of partially melted rock outcroppings near the north polar region. The air was thin and barely sufficient to breath, and the wind was bitterly, painfully cold.
Jan and Kyle sprinted from Jan's ship, the Moldy Crow, to the Tantive IV; Princess Leia was waiting for them as they entered. "Thank you both for coming on such short notice," she said by way of introduction.
"It was our pleasure," Jan said.
Leia led them through the halls of the corvette until they reached the stateroom. Inside the two mercenaries saw a rebel colonel with a scar on his chin and a rugged grin wrapped permanently on his lips, a strikingly attractive woman with a shock of white hair near Leia's age, and a young man with perfect features who hulked larger than anyone else in the room.
"Jan Ors, Kyle Katarn, may I introduce Colonel Han Solo, Agent Winter, and Ensign Kale Naberrie."
"Hello," Jan said. She elbowed Kyle.
"Uh, yeah, hi," he said.
"Please have a seat," Leia said.
Droids brought out drinks as everyone settled in. "Kyle, Jan, you may not realize this, but for the past few years I have been training as a Jedi Knight under the last Jedi Master. Kale here was training with me. That master was killed when Hoth fell. But after he died, he appeared to Kale in a Force vision and told him to find the Valley of the Jedi, and that you could help."
Leia noticed immediately how Kyle straightened in his seat. "I don't know anything about Jedi," he said a little too quickly.
"Yoda said to find Kyle Katarn," Kale said. "He said you could lead me to the Valley of the Jedi."
"Well, right now I'd be more worried about the bounty on your head than about some mystical valley," Kyle said. "Every bounty hunter in the galaxy is after you."
"He has a point, Princess," Han said. "The Tantive IV is a marked ship."
Kale stood up. By nature of his height, when Kale stood up, everybody took notice. He slowly began pacing at the end of the room. "What's up, kid?" Han asked.
"Yoda didn't say we all had to go to the Valley," the young man said. "Just me."
"Kale, we are not splitting up!" Leia said.
"Actually, that's a good idea," Winter said suddenly. Leia looked at her lifetime friend with an expression between anger and despair. "I'm sorry, but Kale and Han are right. Kale doesn't need us on this mission, and we need to unload the Tantive. We've already put ourselves in danger just coming this far out into the rim. Right now, I'm not even sure we could rendezvous with the fleet if we tried."
"And for a million credits," Kyle added, "the bounty hunters would be willing to attack you even if you were with the fleet. That is one of the largest bounties we've ever heard of."
Leia sat back in her seat, looking defeated.
"Look, I know an independent operation that could take the Tantive IV off our hands and give us a new ship," Han said. "The administrator is an old friend of mine. We go get a new ship, and Kale here can go off to Jedi fairyland with the mercs." He looked up at Jan and Kyle. "That's assuming you'd be willing to let us hire you out. Say ten thousand credits?"
"It's not a million, but it'll do," Jan said. "And Kale's welcome to come."
"Me too," Winter said, "if there's room."
Again Leia looked defeated, but Han merely shrugged. "I'm good either way. So we're decided—Kale and Winter with Kyle, and Leia and I go dump the Tantive."
As the two ships left the thin, fading atmosphere of the dead planet, a black speck rested against the surface of the largest moon of the planet, Ghomrassen. Within this speck was a man in Mandalorian armor, resting in a rotating seat platform. He looked out through the expansive shielding of his canopy at a computer-enhanced vision of the two ships.
One he recognized as belonging to a couple of rebel-friendly mercenaries. The other, though, was the ship he had followed in from the rebel rendezvous site that he had managed to ferret out of his contacts.
Boba Fett dismissed the mercenary ship as unimportant. The bounty was on the corvette. He locked in its jump coordinates, and as soon as the ship vanished, launched Slave-1 from the moon's surface to follow.
~~Empire~~
~~Empire~~
Jedi Master Qu Rahn ran through the city of Barons Hed on the moon Sulon; on his heels came a hoard of storm troopers and Grave Tuskens. More importantly, on the edge of the Jedi's senses, he felt dark Jedi hovering around him. It was a terrible mistake to come to this place.
Master Yoda had come to Rahn in a vision, urging him to Sulon. But now Rahn sincerely regretted heeding the venerable Jedi Master's wishes.
With a flying leap the Jedi flew over one of the wide canals that ran through the city and made his way toward a bridge. He swept his golden lightsaber behind him, swatting away blaster and bowcaster bolts. His only hope was to make it out of the city and to his ship.
He felt a surge of dark energy in the Force and skidded to a stop as a strange creature dropped to the ground in front of him. It was a Boltrunian, and as it stood and lit an orange saber, Rahn realized this could only be Maw, one of Governor Jerec's new pet Dark Jedi.
"You were once one of us," Rahn said. "It is never too late to return."
Maw ground his sharp teeth with a jarring clicking sound. "You are nothing. Another dead Jedi."
He charged forward with a powerful swing.
Rahn rolled forward and swung back behind him. Maw caught the counter attack on his blade, spun around and attacked again. His style was aggressive and unrelenting. He attacked with overwhelming power because he knew no other kind. Rahn allowed himself to retreat before the onslaught, fully aware of the approaching troopers.
If he didn't find a way out of this soon, all would be lost.
He stood straight and deactivated his blade. Maw blinked. "Foolish Jedi," he snarled. He rushed forward, his saber swinging.
Rahn gathered the Force within him and focused his entire being on his approaching attacker. His perception of time sped up, giving the allusion of time itself slowing. He rolled under Maw's reckless attack and swung his hilt up. He activated his blade milliseconds before the energy made contact with the Boltrunian's waist. A second later he stopped, his blade off, as Maw tumbled in two pieces to the ground.
"Jediiiiiayaiiii!" Maw screamed in rage, by some trick of his reptilian physiology still alive despite being cut clean in half.
With a last look at the soldiers, Qu Rahn, the last Jedi Master, dove into the canal.
~~Empire~~
~~Empire~~
"It's not much," Kyle said darkly, "but it was home."
Beside him, Jan Ors put a hand on his shoulder and leaned against him as he looked at the Katarn farmstead.
Overhead, Sullust, the planet around which Sulon orbited, dominated the sky. Kyle did not see it, though. Instead, he looked at a long spike of wood protruding from the ground near the entrance of the farmstead. It was still darkened at the tip with his father's blood.
Kale and Winter stepped beside Kyle. "I know what happened here," Winter said softly. "You have my deepest sympathies."
Kyle nodded but said nothing. Instead, he turned to Kale. "So, we're here. I don't know what you expect; there's nothing here except my old droid, and I'm sure it's been deactivated."
"Let's go see," Jan suggested. "You've talked about Weegee enough, it might be worth the trip just for you to take it with us."
"Fine," Kyle said darkly.
The party of four walked through the large farmstead in absolute silence. Kyle looked through every room with a mask-like expression, obviously not trusting himself to say anything. Finally, though, they reached a caved-in room that appeared to have been a work room or study. In one corner, buried under planks of wood, they could see a strangely shaped utility droid.
Kyle knelt by the droid, pulled the debris off it, and began tinkering with it. A few minutes later, with startled beeps, the droid sprang to life and hovered a meter or so off the floor, its appendages whirring.
"Hello, old friend," Kyle said.
The droid beeped and whistled like an astromech droid, and oddly enough Kyle Katarn nodded in understanding. "Yeah, I'm alright," he said to the droid. "I know what happened."
The droid whistled and beeped some more, and suddenly projected a hologram of Kyle's father, Morgan Katarn.
On the far side of the room, Kale slowly backed out with Winter a step behind. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"It's a last message from his father," Kale said. "I would want some privacy if it were me, that's all."
Winter nodded. "How are you doing?"
"I'm tired; confused." He took her hand and smiled. "And thankful you came along."
"Someone has to keep you from breaking everything."
He looked back into the room where the flickering image of Kyle's father spoke to him from beyond the grave. Jan Ors stood beside the mercenary, her hand never leaving his shoulder. He felt a momentary pang of jealousy, which he instantly squashed.
"Kale?" Winter asked.
He looked down at her and saw the question in her eyes. Winter was a beautiful woman, and his first friend among the Alliance. She had been like an older sister to him for these past three years—making sure he got what he needed and had a place to fit in. He would be lost without her.
He also realized that she was not really that much older than he was. Four years was not that large of a span. And since putting on the uniform of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, she obviously viewed Kale as a man, not as the scared boy she found three years ago. And yet, when he looked at her, he saw a Pooja. He saw a Ryoo. He did not see a Mara.
Mara; her face clicked in his mind, pushing out all others. It was frustrating, even infuriating, that he thought only of her. Why her? She tried to kill him, and helped kill his family.
Of course, he knew why. It was who and what he was. Krptonians, his father explained on Hoth, mated for life, and they chose their mate through a type of visual recognition. In other words, they selected their mates literally through love at first site. For better or worse (usually worse), Mara was the only woman Kale could love.
He nodded and smiled at Winter in a vague way, and then looked back to Kyle. Winter continued studying his face for the longest time, before she looked down at the floor in silent understanding.
"You must be the one Master Yoda told me about?" a new voice said from behind them. Kale had not even heard him come in, so caught up was he in his own thoughts.
Kale spun around to face a dark-skinned man in odd tan robes and two lightsabers hanging from his belt. "I am Qu Rahn," the stranger said. "I am a Jedi Master, and I have been tasked with taking you to the Valley of the Jedi."
Kyle chose that moment to rejoin them and looked upon the Jedi without surprise. "My father told me about you," he said.
Qu Rahn nodded sadly. "Morgan was a very good friend. Though he chose to send you to Carida, he was a friend of the Rebel Alliance and before that, of the Jedi. He helped save my life during the Purges. I was saddened to hear of his death." The Jedi pointed at the cylinder in Kyle's hand.
"That was my saber. I gave it to Morgan to hold in trust for you. I believed then, and I still do, that you have the potential to be a great Jedi. It was for this reason that I built a new saber for myself."
"Why do you have two?" Kale asked.
Rahn pulled one of the sabers off his belt. The hilt was beautifully constructed, with gold strands running down each cardinal point from the emitter to the slightly elongated base. "Master Yoda himself gave this to me many years ago when he named me a master. But I have always felt it was not for me. When he came to me in a vision two days ago, I knew it to be true." He handed the hilt to Kale. "This is for you, my young friend."
Having spent three years enduring sparring practice with Leia, Kale was very familiar with light sabers. As he ignited the blade, however, he was surprised by the golden glow of the blade. It seemed to warm him, almost. The color was comforting.
"Thank you, Master Rahn," Kale whispered with awe in his voice.
"Now, we had better hurry," Rahn said. "Governor Jerec knows I'm here. He has just in the past few months recruited several dark Jedi to his cause. It would not be wise to linger. Katarn, will your ship hold us all?"
"The Crow can seat 6 passengers," Kyle said. "It should do."
Kale heard a piercing sound and recognized it as the distant roar of speeders. "We have company coming," he said.
Kyle stared. "You sure, kid?"
"He's sure," Winter confirmed. "Let's go."
As they ran out of the farmstead, they saw three speeders fly over a distant hill, riding along the edge of the valley wall. Overhead, a flight of TIE fighters circled, waiting for the Moldy Crow to attempt a take-off.
"Well that's not good!" Jan said.
The two speeders carried ten troopers apiece. The TIE's were in Kale's mind the greater threat. "Master Rahn, could you handle ten stormtroopers?" he asked.
"I believe so."
"Good." Kale jumped.
Ignoring the startled gasps from Kyle and Jan, he flew in a parabolic course directly toward the spot where, if his father's lessons on calculus and geometry were correct, one of the two speeders should be in five, four, three, two….
He landed in the middle of the speeder with the kinetic energy of a bomb. He drove the speeder into the ground and then immediately soared back into the air as the speeder and all aboard it crumbled into the ground with bone-crushing force.
He ignored the other speeder and instead flew straight up toward the flight of TIEs.
The TIE fighters were not equipped to sense individual life forms except under their targeting array. Their defensive sensor net was geared only toward detecting possible technological threats. So their pilots had no idea that Kale was approaching. For that matter, they had no idea that he even could.
When he sheared off a solar panel of one of the fighters with his arm, the other fighters instantly broke formation, looking for the new threat. Kale tailed the nearest one. Using his newly acquired lightsaber, he slashed another solar panel off, sending a second fighter to its death.
The pilots realized what was happening by this time and began targeting him directly. He took two laser cannon blasts directly in the back and began falling as the pain of the impacts jarred him. Laser cannons could not kill him in a single shot, but like lightsabers they could hurt, and with ship-level weapons, he did not want to test just how many shots he could take.
With a burst of speed beyond even the imaginations of the engineers at Seinar Fleet Systems, Kale flew directly at the canopy of an approaching TIE. He caught a brief glimpse of a dark-suited figure working desperately at the controls before Kale crashed right through the small ship. He was already gone by the time the ship exploded.
Only two fighters remained, and one of them broke off while the other came in, laser cannons blasting.
Kale came to a halt, floating weightlessly in the air while the ship approached. He moved only enough to evade the laser cannons, until the pilot realized he was not going to move and attempted pulling up at the last minute. Kale reared his right fist back, and as the ship attempted to fly over him, he shot up and punched the canopy in the exact center of the window.
The transparisteel canopy shattered as the spherical hull of the ship crushed in within itself. The two solar panels on either side ripped free and continued forward on momentum alone, until, without the controlling effect of the twin ion engines to power and guide them, they began spinning wildly in the moon's windy atmosphere and crashed back to the ground below.
When there was no further threat of air attack, Kale allowed himself to float back down to the ground. There, he found a stalled speeder, ten dead stormtroopers, and Qu Rahn hooking his lightsaber to his belt.
"What in the stars are you?" Kyle asked as Kale landed.
Kale shrugged. "Kryptonian. So, are we ready to go now?" He walked into the Moldy Crow, leaving the rest to stare at him.
"I'm Kryptonion," Kyle mocked. "Like that explains anything."
"Come on," Jan said. "We can talk after we're off this rock."